Pope Francis arrived in the popemobile to Mass in the Italian town of L'Aquila, for a celebration of forgiveness that has occurred in this city since 1294.
In his homily, the Pope referenced his own helicopter landing amidst heavy fog that morning in L'Aquila to reflect on the link between misery and mercy.
POPE FRANCIS
The helicopter pilot was going round and round and round, then he saw a small opening and went in there. He managed, a master. I thought about misery. With misery, the same thing happens.
We go round and around, but when the Lord makes a small opening, get in there! They are the wounds of Christ, and there lies mercy, in your misery, there is the opening in your misery that the Lord makes for you to go inside.
Pope Francis also made mention of Pope Celestine V, the first pope to resign from the papacy, and whose tomb is in L'Aquila.
POPE FRANCIS
Celestine V was a courageous example of the Gospel, because no logic of power was able to imprison or control him. In him, we admire a Church free of worldly logic and wholly a witness to the name of God, which is mercy.
Following Mass, he then opened the holy door of forgiveness of the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio to open the festival of forgiveness—which inscribed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
He is the first pope to open the holy door since Pope Celestine V, 728 years ago.
The door remains open the night of August 28 each year after Pope Celestine V declared that whoever passes through it on that night, confessed and repented, will receive a plenary indulgence.
Pope Francis then prayed before the tomb of Pope Celestine V, a Benedictine monk who was crowned pope in that same cathedral in 1294, and became the first of three popes in the history of the Church to resign.
JM
