Pope Francis on Saturday used his New Year’s message at St. Peter’s Basilica to issue a clarion call for an end to violence against women, saying it was insulting to God.
Pope emphasized the important role of women and mothers in society.
In his homily for the feast of Mary, the Mother of God, the pontiff said on New Year’s Day in St Peter’s Basilica that mothers must be supported and women protected.
“How much violence there is against women!” the 85-year-old lamented. “There must be an end to it! To violate a woman is to insult God, who took his human form from a woman.”
Unlike Vespers on New Year’s Eve, Francis again presided over the first service of 2022 himself.
The Church is mother, the Church is woman, the Argentinian pontiff said. “Mothers and women do not look to the world to exploit it, but to give their lives.” This is what the world needs in this time full of crises and wars, he said. Mothers know how to overcome obstacles and conflicts, how to make peace.
“We need people who can forge bonds of communion, who can counter the many barbed wires of division,” the Pope said.
Mothers and women see with their hearts, the pontiff stressed. “And since mothers give life and women preserve the world, we should all work to support mothers and protect women,” Francis urged.
On New Year’s Eve, the Pope had surprised observers by not presiding over the thanksgiving vespers in St Peter’s Basilica with the traditional hymn of praise “Te Deum” (“Thee, O God, we praise”) himself as planned, but only attended it.
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