In a packed Piazza di Spagna, brimming with 20,000 faithful, the Pope prayed to Mary to protect against “contagion of evil”.
“As we approach Christmas, he prayed, “teach us to go against the tide,” the Pope prayed, asking Mary to protect the world from the “contagion of evil”
Francis had a proper conversation with the sick during his visit to Piazza di Spagna to pay tribute to the statue of Our Lady. When he finished his prayer, the Pope stopped for a while to speak with some sick people who had been waiting for him since this morning. The Pope gave each of them a kiss, a caress and a word of encouragement. At a certain point, two children, a boy and a girl, popped out of nowhere and gave him a kiss. The Pope bent down for them to kiss him. In a Piazza di Spagna swarming with people, the Pope made his usual gesture of handing over his skull cap to a boy who muscled his way through the crowd. “Is that ok?” he asked Francis after the Pope handed him the skull cap as a gift. Francis then got back into the Ford Focus and the first thing he did was to wind down the window: still so many people to greet. At the Barcaccia fountain, someone handed Francis a white rose over the barrier.
Francis dedicated all of today to the Virgin Mary. In the morning he prayed the Angelus and then invoked the Virgin Mary, recalling that salvation is not a material object that can be bought. “Through your intercession, may the power of God’s love which protected you from original sin, free humanity from all spiritual and material slavery and allow God’s plan of salvation to triumph in people’s hearts and in every event. May grace prevail over pride in us, your children, too, so that we can be merciful, just as our Heavenly Father is merciful,” the Pope said in his prayers.
“O Mary, our Mother, today the people of God in celebration worships you immaculate, always preserved from the contagion of sin. Accept the gift I offer on behalf of the Church that is in Rome and throughout the whole world,” Francis said out loud at the feet of the statue of Our Lady, where he placed a basket of white roses from the Basilica of St. Mary Major which he visited for the sixteenth time since his election on 13 May 2013.
Francis was accompanied to the Liberian Basilica (as the Basilica of St. Mary Major is also called, Ed.) by the Substitute of the Secretariat of State, Giovanni Angelo Becciu and the Prefect of the Papal Household, Georg Gänswein. Here. He was welcomed by the Archpriest, Cardinal Santos y Abril, while in Piazza di Spagna he was greeted by Rome’s mayor, Ignazio Marino, whom he embraced, the President of Lazio, Nicola Zingaretti, Cardinals Agostino Vallini, Vicar of Rome, Fernando Filoni, Prefect of Propaganda Fide and Julian Herranz, President Emeritus of the dicastery for legislative texts, Auxiliary Bishops Matteo Zuppi and Lorenzo Leuzzi and above all, by a huge crowd of approximately 20 thousand people. There were so many people that they even spilled into Via del Babuino, Via Condotti and other connecting streets.
A skullcapless Pope reminded people of the truth of faith, according to which, Mary triumphs over sin and death: “evil has no power over you”, he said, addressing the Virgin Mary, emphasising that this “fills us with hope and fortitude in our daily battle against the threat of evil.” “Motivated by this hope,” he concluded, “today we invoke your maternal protection upon us, our families, this City and the entire world.”
Francis then greeted all the sick and the disabled who were sitting in the first rows. “Pope Francis encouraged me and told me he will pray for me and for Rome,” Rome’s mayor, Ignazio Marino said after exchanging a few words with the Holy Father straight after the ceremony in honour of the Virgin Mary in Piazza Mignanelli.
At the end of the ceremony, when asked whether he had spoken to Pope Francis, Mr. Marino said: “We only spoke very briefly. I told him I feel the great weight of responsibility of the past few weeks and the Holy Father encouraged me and told me he will pray for me and for Rome.”
The image of Piazza di Spagna, Via Condotti and Via del Babuino inundated by 20 thousand people whose attention was totally fixed on Francis’ words and gestures and not on the brightly decorated shop windows which usually capture people’s attention in the busiest shopping streets in Rome, will remain imprinted in people’s memories. It was in this unusual setting that the Pope urged people not to reduce Christmas to a glitzy party. At this time that leads us to the feast of the Nativity of Jesus, teach us to go against the tide: to undress, lower ourselves, give ourselves, listen, remain silent, to decentre from ourselves, to make room for the beauty of God, the source of true joy. O our Mother Immaculate, pray for us!” Francis prayed to the Virgin Mary. The Pope left Piazza di Spagna in his Ford Focus, just before 5 pm.
