St. John the Baptist was a ‘great prophet of hope,’ Pope says in special Jubilee audience
January 13, 2025
» Continue to this story on Vatican Press Office
CWN Editor's Note: In the first in a series of special Saturday audiences for the jubilee year, Pope Francis paid tribute to St. John the Baptist as a “great prophet of hope.”
When the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod, he was “full of questions,” Pope Francis told pilgrims in a packed Paul VI Audience Hall. “We too bring many questions on our pilgrimage, because there are many ‘Herods’ who still oppose the Kingdom of God.”
“Jesus, however, shows us the new path, the path of the Beatitudes, which are the surprising law of the Gospel,” the Pope continued. “Let us ask ourselves, then: do I have within me a true desire to start again?”
Pope Francis concluded:
From John the Baptist, then, we learn to recreate ourselves. Hope for our common home—this Earth of ours, so abused and wounded—and the hope for all human beings resides in the difference of God. His greatness is different. And let us start again from this originality of God, which shone in Jesus and which now binds us to serve, to love fraternally, to acknowledge ourselves as small. And to see the least, to listen to them and to be their voice. Here is the new beginning, our Jubilee.The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). About CWN news coverage.
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