Vatican City, 22 November, 2021 / 8:10 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Francis told young adults and teens participating in a Christmas songwriting contest to hold onto the hope, beauty, and love present in the season which celebrates Christ’s birth.
“I am happy to meet you, now at the doors of Advent, the period which every year introduces us to Christmas and its Mystery,” the pope said Nov. 22.
“This year too its lights will be subdued due to the consequences of the pandemic, which still weighs on our time,” he noted. “All the more reason we are called to examine ourselves and not to lose hope.”
“The feast of the Birth of Christ does not clash with the trial we are experiencing, because it is the feast of compassion, of tenderness par excellence. Its beauty is humble and full of human warmth,” Francis told the contestants and its organizers.
He added: “I like to repeat the words of Saint Paul VI: ‘This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to fall into despair.’ What kind of beauty? Not the false one made up of appearance and earthly wealth, which is empty and generates emptiness. No.”
