Pope Francis has spoken several times about the family, its problems and resources, in the light of the Gospel. We offer some excerpts from Homilies that date from the time when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, on specific matters concerning the defense of life, from birth to death, marriage, education, peace and family harmony. These issues are inevitably intertwined with social issues, since the family is the basic cell, the resource and the frontier of society.
ABORTION
Abortion is never a solution. We need to listen, understand and accompany in order to save both lives: to respect the smallest and most defenseless human being, by taking action to support the preservation of life, to allow his birth, and then be creative in ways that lead to his full development (16 September 2012).
DEFENSE OF LIFE AND DIGNITY
To those who were offended when Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, Jesus says: “The tax-collectors and the prostitutes are preceding you.” This was the worst thing for that time. Jesus cannot stand hypocrites. They are the ones who have clericalized to use a concept that’s easy to understand the Church of the Lord. They fill Her with precepts –and I say this with pain, and if it seems to be a complaint or an offense, forgive me– but in our ecclesiastical region there are priests who do not baptize children of single mothers because they were not conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites. Those who have clericalized the Church, those who turn the people away from God's salvation. And that poor girl, who could have sent her own child back to the sender, but had the courage bring him into the world, goes from parish to parish so that he can be baptized (2 September 2012).
IN DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE
The identity and the survival of the family, composed of a father, a mother and children, is at stake. The life of many children, who will be discriminated against in advance, by being deprived of human maturity that God wanted a father and a mother to give them, is at stake. A direct refusal of the law of God written in our hearts is at stake. We shouldn’t be naive: this is not just a political battle; it’s the desire to destroy God’s plan. This is not merely a legislative project (which is only the instrument), but a “move” the father of lies, who wants to confuse and deceive God’s children (8 July 2010).
EDUCATION
When I saw the text before the Mass, I thought about the way of life of the first Christian communities and about today’s Mass, and I wondered if our educational work should not follow the same path to achieve harmony: harmony in all boys and girls who have been entrusted to us, the inner harmony, that of their personalities. By working like artisans, by imitating God, “shaping” the lives of these young people, we can achieve harmony and redeem the dissonances, which are always dark. The harmony, on the contrary, is bright, clear, it’s light. What must be sought is the harmony of a heart that grows and that we accompany on this educational path. (18 April 2012).
TRAFFICKING IN HUMAN BEINGS
Today, in this city, we want the cry to resound, God's question: “Where is your brother?” This question God addresses to every man runs through all the districts of the city, it runs through our hearts and, more importantly, it also enters into the hearts of many modern Cains. Someone might ask: which brother? Your brother who is a slave, where is it? The one killed each day in the clandestine laboratory, in the prostitution network, in the kids exploited and used, when they beg for alms, as drug couriers, to carry out robberies or because they prostitute themselves. Where is your brother? The one who has to work almost secretly, as a cardboard collector, because his work is not legalized? Where is your brother? Faced with this question, we can’t pretend to be distracted, as did the priest did when passed next to the wounded man, or like the Levite who looked the other way: because the question doesn’t concern me, but someone else. God addresses this question to everybody, to each of us! (25 September 2012)
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
Little by little, we have gotten used to seeing and hearing, through the media, about crime and violence in contemporary society, and we have also become accustomed to touching it and feeling it around us and in our flesh. The drama is in the street, in the neighborhood, in our home, and why not, in our hearts. We live with the violence that kills and destroys families, reignites war and conflicts in many countries of the world. We live with the envy, hatred, slander, and worldliness in our hearts. The suffering of the innocent, peaceful people doesn’t stop striking us; contempt for the rights of the most vulnerable individuals and peoples is not far from us, and the tyranny of money with its demonic effects such as drugs, corruption, trafficking in human beings even children along with the material and moral misery are commonplace. This symphony of the destruction of decent work is joined by painful migration and the lack of a future. Our own mistakes and our personal sins as a Church are not excluded from this panorama. Selfishness and lack of ethical values in a society that create metastases in families, in the neighborhood communities, in towns and villages, speak to us about our limitations, our weakness and our inability to transform this list of countless destructive realities.
EVANGELIZATION
It’s not enough for our truth to be Orthodox and our pastoral action effective. Without the joy of beauty, truth becomes cold and even cruel and proud, as we see in the speech of many bitter fundamentalists. They seem to be chewing ash instead savoring the sweetness of Christ’s glorious Truth that illuminates with a quiet light all of reality, taking as it is each day. Without the joy of beauty, work for the good becomes somber efficiency, as we see in the action of many activists who have exceeded the limits. Is seems like they are mourning over statistical reality instead of anointing it with oil the inner joy that transforms the hearts, one by one, from within (22 April 2011).
NEW EVANGELIZATION
God lives in the city and the Church lives in the city. The mission is not opposed to the duty of learning from the city its culture and its changes when we go through the streets preaching the gospel. This is the fruit of the Gospel itself that bears fruit in the interaction with the soil into which the seed falls. Not only the modern city is a challenge for the Christian, but every city, every culture, every mind and every human heart at all times has been, is and will be a challenge. The contemplation of the Incarnation that St. Ignatius presents in the Spiritual Exercises is a good example of the look of the believer that the Gospel offers. A look that doesn’t stay mired in dualism, constantly moving around and looking at a reason considering the path from diagnosis to planning, but rather a look that is involved and entangled dramatically in the city’s reality and engages with it in action. The Gospel is an accepted kerygma and motivates transmission. The mediations are elaborated in real life and coexistence (25 August 2011)
SIMPLICITY OF THE HEART
The wisdom of thousands of women and men who are queuing up to travel and work honestly, to put bread on the table every day, to save money and slowly buy the bricks to improve the home. Thousands and thousands of children with their jackets parading through the corridors and along the streets from home to school and from school to home. Meanwhile, the grandparents, who treasure up popular wisdom, meet to share and tell stories. Passing through the crisis and manipulations, the contempt of the powerful relegate them in poverty, offer them the suicide of drugs, insecurity and violence, and tempt them with hatred and vindictive resentment. But those humble people, regardless where they are and what their status is, will appeal to the wisdom of those the one who know that he is the son of a God who is not distant, which is the companion with the Cross and encourages with the Resurrection to trust in miracles and in daily successes, who encourages them to enjoy the joys of sharing and celebrating (25 May 2011).
MARY’S MOTHERHOOD
In order for God to enter into our history in a human way, he needed a mother. He asked her this. She is the mother to whom we all look, the daughter of our people, the maid, the pure one, the only who totally belongs to God, the discreet one, who makes a space so that the Son accomplish the sign, the one that at every moment provides the reality that renews us, not like a patroness or a protagonist, but as a servant; the star who knows how to wane so that the Sun may shine forth. This is Mary’s mediation. It is the mediation of woman who doesn’t refuse maternity, but assumes from the start. A maternity of double childbirth: first in Bethlehem and then on Calvary. This is a maternity that embraces and accompanies the friends of the Son, who is the only reference until the end of time. Mary as mother continues to be with us, helping us lovingly, “placed at the very center of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself” (cf. Redemptoris Mater, 11). The Mother who makes a space so that mercy, the Grace that revolutionizes and transforms our lives and our identity, may reach us: the Holy Spirit that makes us adopted children, delivers us from slavery and, in a real and mystic possession, gives us the gift of freedom and brings forth from our hearts the invocation of a new relationship: Father (7 November 2011)
