“The Church remains credible not because of power, numbers, or strategies, but when faith becomes a lived witness, expressed and translated into concrete acts of liberation, justice, and mercy that restore dignity and open paths to true freedom.” Cardinal Pietro Parolin made this statement when presiding over Mass on January 25, at the Cathedral of Copenhagen as the Papal Legate for the celebrations of the 12th centenary of Saint Ansgar’s mission in Denmark.
The Secretary of State recalled that it was in the 9th century when the Benedictine monk arrived in Northern Europe for a mission founded not on “strategies or success, but on fidelity to Jesus,” and that the first thing he did was redeem the freedom of some slaves. Importantly, Cardinal Parolin pointed out, his action, in a world “wounded by new forms of slavery—economic, cultural, spiritual—and marked by exclusion and indifference,” speaks today with “renewed relevance.”
The Cardinal emphasized the strength of a bond forged in the past and the ongoing presence of pastoral care and the evangelical zeal that animated Ansgar’s mission twelve centuries ago. A mission that arose from an “extraordinary experience of liberation” in his own life, Cardinal Parolin said.
Drawing from the reading of Isaiah (52:7-10), he observed, that it is not so much about the message but about the messenger, whose feet “are beautiful not for the ideas or explanations they bring, but because they bring the good news, capable of saving people by transforming the hearts of those who listen and making them free.”
In the same way, he continued, Ansgar had experienced the joy of being forgiven by God and desired to “share that joy with others,” because that was “the good news he carried with him.”
