On Saturday, April 2, Pope Francis landed at Malta International Airport. Already the choice of the motto of this trip "They showed us unusual kindness." (Acts 28:2), taken from St. Paul's account of the welcome in Malta after a shipwreck, presents one of the first cornerstones of this apostolic visit.
In fact, the Pope introduced the theme of welcoming, already in one of his first meetings, the one with the Authorities and the Diplomatic Corps in the "Grand Council Chamber" of the Grand Master's Palace in Valletta. In recent years Malta has often been the landing point for barges laden with shipwrecked immigrants on the routes that lead from the south of the world to Europe. The Pope recalled that "the migratory phenomenon is not a circumstance of the moment, but marks our era." In this regard, he reiterated that "the Mediterranean needs European co-responsibility, to become once again a theater of solidarity ... and not become Europe's largest cemetery."
In addition to the theme of hospitality, the Pope also paid great attention to what is happening in the world: he cited the shipwreck off the coast of Libya and spoke of the war in Ukraine. Faced with the "night of war" wanted once again by "some powerful people, sadly locked in the anachronistic pretensions of nationalist interests," the Pope invited us to not close our eyes to hope and urged commitment: "Please, let us not allow the dream of peace to fade," was his heartfelt appeal.
In the Maltese social context, permeated with Christian history, but marked by an incisive and rapid secularization, Pope Bergoglio specifies that "progress does not mean cutting off roots with the past in the name of a false prosperity dictated by profit," and invites us to be on guard against "artificial homologations and ideological colonizations."
Above all, and in several moments, such as at the National Shrine of Ta' Pinu, the Pontiff recalled that "the joy of the Church is to evangelize," punctuating the various passages with this formula. Only the attraction of joy can free the ecclesial dynamics from the temptation of self-referentiality, because "a Church that wishes to go out to meet everyone with the lighted lamp of the Gospel" cannot be a closed circle.
This is why the Pope pointed to Mary and John beneath the cross, where Jesus' last words from the cross exhort us to make hospitality the perennial style of discipleship. Because hospitality, he reiterated, "is also the litmus test to verify how effectively the Church is permeated by the spirit of the Gospel." And the Gospel Francis proposes is one that invites us to "welcome, to be experts in humanity and to light fires of tenderness when the cold of life hangs over those who suffer."
