Matteo Bruni:

Good morning. Good morning, Holy Father. Today, accompanying you are about eighty journalists, from more than ten countries, on what you have described as a “penitential pilgrimage”, a somewhat special journey. We are happy to listen to you these days, and even now, if you would like to address us. 

Pope Francis:

A blessed Sunday to you all, welcome! Thank you for this service and also for this company: I experience it as company... Thank you for your work. I would like to greet you as always. I think I can get around, we can go.

Let us be careful on this journey: as [Matteo Bruni] said, it is a penitential journey, let us undertake it in this spirit. I also welcome back the “doyenne” [Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki]: she's back, after a few trips where she was not there...

Happy Sunday! I would like today... There is no Angelus, but let's do it here, the Angelus.

It is Grandparents' Day: grandparents, grandmothers, who are the ones who have passed on history, traditions, customs and so many things. Today we need: to go back to the grandparents - I will say this as a leitmotif -, in the sense that young people must have contact with their grandparents, go back to them, go back to their roots, not to stay there, no, but to carry them forward, like the tree that takes strength from its roots and carries it forward in flowers and fruit. I always remember that poem by Bernárdez: everything that blooms on the tree comes to it from that which it has underground, which are the grandparents. And I would also like to remember, as a religious, the old men and women religious, the “grandparents” of consecrated life: please, do not hide them away, they are the wisdom of a religious family; and may the new men and women religious, the novices, have contact with them: they will give us all the life experience that will help us so much to move forward.

Each of us has grandfathers and grandmothers, some are gone, others are alive; let us remember them today in a special way. From them we have received many things, first of all history. Thank you!

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Bulletin of the Holy See Press Office, 24 July 2022