Dear brothers and sisters,

I am pleased to be able to participate, albeit from a distance, in this International Eucharistic Congress, celebrated in the city of San Francisco de Quito, with the beautiful motto: “Fraternity to heal the world”.

The lessons we can draw from the Blessed Eucharist always surprise us. We might say, with the Psalm, “If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee”, silently present in the Tabernacle (cf. Ps 139:18). Among these teachings, you chose that of fraternity, as an essential condition for a new world, a more just world, a more humane world.

The first Fathers of the Church already told us that the sign of bread kindles in the People of God the desire for brotherhood, since, just as bread cannot be made with just a single grain, so we too must walk together, because “one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be” (cf. Saint Augustine, Sermon 227). This is how we grow as brethren, this is how we grow as a Church, joined in the water of baptism and purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit (cf. ibid.). A profound brotherhood, that is born of the union with God, that is born from letting ourselves be ground, like grain, in order to become bread, the body of Christ, thus participating fully in the Eucharist and in the assembly of saints (cf. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans, 4:1).

This brotherhood must also be proactive. An example of this, which comes to my mind now, is the thought of a German religious sister who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Angela Autsh. Even before being arrested, when the evil looming over the world was already evident, she invited her nephews, who were approaching Holy Communion for the first time, she invited her relatives who had strayed a little, and she invited also those who had remained devout, to rebel against that evil with simple and, in some places dangerous gestures, to come as close as possible to the Sacrament of the altar, to rebel through Communion.

For her, to urge frequent communion, especially in prayer for the Pope and the Church, which was persecuted at that time, meant finding in the Eucharist a bond that strengthens the vigour of the Church herself, a bond that strengthens this vigour between her members and with God, and for her it meant to “organize” the fabric of a resistance that the enemy cannot unravel, because it does not respond to a human plan. These simple gestures make us more aware of the fact that, if one member suffers, all the body suffers with him; they help us become Cyrenians of Christ, who took upon Himself the weight of the world’s suffering to heal the world.

Sisters, brothers, let us learn this lesson, let us recuperate this radical fraternity with God and between men and women. We are one, in the single Lord of our life; we are one in a way that we are not able to understand fully, but what we do understand is that only in this unity can we serve the world and heal it.

May Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin of El Quinche shield her with her mantle. Thank you.

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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 9 September 2024