Giving his traditional Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” blessing on Saturday 25th Decemebr, Pope Francis urged leaders to be open to dialogue to resolve the world’s many “con-flicts, crises, and disagreements.”
Speaking from the central balcony overlooking a rainy St. Peter’s Square on Dec. 25, the Pope said that people had become so accustomed to disputes that “by now we hardly even notice them.” Referring to the baby Jesus, he said: “In the cold of the night, he stretches out his tiny arms towards us: he is in need of everything, yet he comes to give us everything. Let us ask him for the strength to be open to dialogue.”
“On this festive day, let us implore him to stir up in the hearts of everyone a yearning for reconciliation and fraternity.”
Last Christmas, the coronavirus pandemic forced the Pope to break with custom and deliver his blessing “To the City and the World” inside the Vatican’s Hall of Bene-diction. But this year, he returned to the Loggia of the Blessings, with its view of the windswept square embraced by the arms of Bernini’s colonnade. The live-streamed ceremony began with musical accompani-ment by Italy’s Carabinieri Band.
The Pope, who celebrated his 85th birthday, offered Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday night.
The Pope began his “Urbi et Orbi” address with a reflection on the Christ Child. “The Word became flesh in order to dialogue with us. God does not desire to carry on a monologue, but a dialogue. For God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is dialogue, an eternal and infinite communion of love and life,” he said. “By the coming of Jesus, the Person of the Word made flesh, into our world, God showed us the way of encounter and dialogue. Indeed, he made that way incarnate in himself, so that we might know it and follow it, in trust and hope.” Pope Francis noted that the pandemic had strained social relationships, isolating people from each other. “On the international level too, there is the risk of avoiding dialogue, the risk that this complex crisis will lead to taking shortcuts rather than setting out on the longer paths of dialogue,” he commented. “Yet only those paths can lead to the resolution of conflicts and to lasting benefits for all.”