The world – marked by a climate of violence and hatred – needs healing, Pope Leo XIV said.
“We live in a society that is becoming ill due to a kind of ‘bulimia’ of social media connections: we are hyperconnected, bombarded by images, sometimes even false or distorted,” he told thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his general audience July 30.
By learning to communicate with honesty and prudence, Christians can help avoid wounding others, and by sharing the Gospel, they can lead people to be healed by his word, he said.
It was his first public general audience since taking a brief summer break in July. Tens of thousands of people, many of them pilgrims in Rome for the July 28-Aug. 3 Jubilee of Youth, including many groups from the United States, and some traveling with their bishops.
Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia, for example, was traveling with a delegation of about 40 young people and youth ministers. He had a chance to greet the pope after his main talk, giving him a green ballcap of the Philadelphia Eagles football team.
Visitors in the square also gifted the pope several presents as he rode around in the open popemobile, such as two white cowboy hats and a small takeaway pizza box.
The popemobile stopped near people holding two large handwritten signs saying, “Pope Leo, I brought you (pizza) from Chicago” and “We have Aurelio’s pizza,” the name of a pizzeria-restaurant based in Homewood, Illinois, south of Chicago and near the suburb where the pope grew up.
The pope took the box, saw what it was, and gave the group a thumbs-up. On its website, the restaurant boasts its own take on a pepperoni pizza with “the Poperoni™ Pizza to honor the pope’s most recent visit and love of Aurelio’s pizza.”
His catechesis, dedicated to the Jubilee theme of “Jesus Christ our Hope,” was the last in a series of talks on Jesus’s public ministry. He focused on “the healing of a deaf man” in the Gospel of St. Mark (7:31-37).
“This time in which we live also needs healing. Our world is witnessing a climate of violence and hatred that demeans human dignity,” the pope said.
“We are overwhelmed by countless messages that stir within us a storm of contradictory emotions,” he said.
In fact, “it is possible that within us arises the desire to turn everything off. We may come to prefer not to feel anything anymore,” he said. “Even our words risk being misunderstood, and we may be tempted to close ourselves in silence, into a lack of communication where, despite our closeness, we are no longer able to say to one another the most simple and profound things.”
The Gospel account of the deaf man who had a speech impediment shows Jesus’s understanding of “what lies behind the silence and closure of this man, as if Jesus had perceived his need for intimacy and closeness.”
“Jesus offers him silent closeness,” touches him and says, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!”
“It is as if Jesus were saying to him, ‘Be opened to this world that frightens you! Be opened to the relationships that have disappointed you! Be opened to the life you have given up facing!’ Closing in on oneself, in fact, is never a solution,” he said.
“All of us experience what it means to be misunderstood, to feel that we are not truly heard,” he said. “All of us need to ask the Lord to heal our way of communicating, not only so that we may be more effective, but also so that we may avoid wounding others with our words.”
“Dear brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord that we may learn to communicate with honesty and prudence,” he said.
“Let us pray for all those who have been wounded by the words of others,” he said. “Let us pray for the Church, that she may never fail in her mission to lead people to Jesus, so that they may hear his Word, be healed by it, and in turn become bearers of his message of salvation.”
