Pope Francis presided at this Mass in Macedonia Square. It is the geographical and symbolic center of the city of Skopje. Around 15,000 enthusiastic pilgrims were in attendance for the ceremony. They come from all over the Balkan region.
In his homily, the pope said Christ is the only one capable of satisfying the hunger of the human heart.
POPE FRANCIS
“He always does so in a way that defies the narrowness of our calculations, the mediocrity of our expectations and the superficiality of our rationalizations. A way that questions our viewpoints and our certainties, while inviting us to move to a new horizon enabling us to view reality in a different way.”
Pope Francis lamented how people have become accustomed to feeding on other things that seem to take away hunger but, in reality, make one lose the taste and flavor of reality.
POPE FRANCIS
“We have become accustomed to eating the stale bread of disinformation and ending up as prisoners of dishonor, labels and ignominy. We thought that conformism would satisfy our thirst, yet we ended up drinking only indifference and insensitivity. We fed ourselves on dreams of splendor and grandeur, and ended up consuming distraction, insularity and solitude. We gorged ourselves on networking, and lost the taste of fraternity.”
This is precisely why the pope invited everyone to satisfy their hunger with “the bread of the Word of God and of fraternity,” because to love one's neighbor is to love God himself.
It was also an historical moments, as Pope Francis is the first Pontiff to celebrate Mass in North Macedonia.
