VATICAN (CNS): The call to make sacrifices for others out of love remains urgent as so many people continue to suffer from war, violence, exclusion and poverty, Pope Francis said during a February 24 audience with members of the Pro Petri Sede Association at the Vatican.
“Let us put into practice the call to do good to everyone, taking the time to love the least and most defenseless, the abandoned and despised, those who are discriminated against and marginalised,” he said
The group, founded more than 150 years ago, is active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and collects donations for the pope’s initiatives and charitable efforts by the Holy See.
“Today the call to give yourselves for love of our brothers and sisters is no less urgent: so many of them suffer from war, violence, exclusion, material and spiritual poverty,” he said in his address.
Lent is also an opportune time for responding to this call because the season “calls us to conversion in order to move from the slavery of selfishness to the freedom to love and serve God and our brothers and sisters,” he said.
Pope Francis recalled the generosity and solidarity of the early Christians described in the Acts of the Apostles and how “they were able to put everything in common to support their more fragile brothers and sisters.”
