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"God is hidden in human misery": Pope Francis Highlights Dignity of Migrants, Prisoners

An image of the Annunciation and the Incarnation — when God became man in the womb of the Virgin Mary — sits close to the altar during a Mass Pope Francis celebrated on July 7, 2024, in Trieste, Italy. | Vatican Media

In the face of a sometimes “anesthetized,” consumerist society, we must recall the “scandal” of our Christian faith — that God became man and dwells in each of us, especially the weakest, Pope Francis said in the northern Italian city of Trieste on Sunday.

“We need the scandal of faith,” the pontiff said at a Mass on July 7. “A faith rooted in the God who became man and, therefore, [is] a human faith, a faith of flesh, which enters history, which touches people’s lives, which heals broken hearts, which becomes a leaven of hope and the seed of a new world.”

At the Mass for approximately 8,500 people in Unità d’Italia Square, next to the Port of Trieste, Francis said Catholics need “a faith that awakens consciences from slumber, that puts its finger in the wounds, in the wounds of society ... a restless faith that helps overcome mediocrity and sloth of the heart, [a faith] which becomes a thorn in the flesh of a society often anesthetized and stunned by consumerism.”

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Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.