Fr Lombardi reflects on the Pope's Apostolic Voyage

(Vatican Radio) Following a busy day on Friday, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, spoke with Lydia O’Kane about the Pope’s message for young people.

Pope Francis, he said, in visiting the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum on Friday morning, and taking part in the Via Crucis on Friday night, contemplated two aspects of “a question without an answer”: the mystery of hate, and the mystery of the suffering of innocents. “He looks for answers,” Fr Lombardi said, “in contemplating the Cross of Jesus Christ,” seeing “that God Himself takes the suffering on Himself, and participates profoundly in the suffering of the world and the consequences of hate.” In this sense, he continued, “we can begin to find answers.”

Father Lombardi also looked ahead to the events of Saturday, especially Pope Francis’ visit to the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy, and the Prayer Vigil in the evening. “In the morning we meet the two most important witnesses of the mercy of God [St Faustina and St John Paul II], and of the message of the mercy here in Krakow in their home.” With the Vigil, he said, “there is also a new important step for all the young people to learn from these two big witnesses, and from the Pope [who] is presenting to them the message of the mercy of the God.”

Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s full interview with Father Federico Lombardi, SJ: