Pope Leo XIV on Sunday prayed for the victims of a shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis and deplored a worldwide “pandemic of arms” that has left many children dead or injured.
“Our prayers for the victims of the tragic shooting during a school Mass in the American state of Minnesota,” the pontiff said in English on Aug. 31 after leading the weekly Angelus prayer from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
“We include in our prayers,” he added, “the countless children killed and injured every day around the world. Let us plead to God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world.”
An Aug. 27 shooting at a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis left two children dead and 17 others wounded.
Leo turned to Mary, the Queen of Peace, to ask for her intercession “to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’”
In his other appeals after the Angelus, delivered in Italian, Pope Leo repeated his calls for an immediate ceasefire and “a serious commitment to dialogue” in the Middle East, and for prayer and concrete gestures for the victims of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“The voice of arms must be silenced, while the voice of brotherhood and justice must be raised,” he said.
The pope said his heart is also wounded for those who have died or are missing after a boat carrying migrants from Africa to the Canary Islands capsized off the coast of Mauritania. According to the BBC, at least 69 people have died and many others are missing.
“This mortal tragedy repeats every day everywhere in the world,” Leo said. “Let us pray that the Lord teaches us, as individuals and as a society, to put fully into practice his word: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’”
“We entrust all our missing, injured, and dead everywhere to our Savior’s loving embrace,” the pontiff said both in English and in Italian.
In his spiritual message before the Angelus prayer, Pope Leo spoke about encounter, which requires openness of heart and humility.
“Humility is really freedom from ourselves,” he emphasized. “It is born when the kingdom of God and its righteousness become our real concern and we allow ourselves to lift up our eyes and look ahead: not down at our feet, but at what lies ahead!”
Leo said people who put themselves before others tend to think they are more interesting than anything else, “yet deep down, they are quite insecure.”
“Whereas,” he continued, “those who know that they are precious in God’s eyes, who know they are God’s children, have greater things to be worried about; they possess a sublime dignity all their own.”
The pope reflected on Jesus’ example of how to be a good guest, as described in the day’s Gospel reading; Jesus “acts with respect and sincerity, avoiding merely polite formalities that preclude authentic encounter,” Leo explained.
To extend an invitation to another person also shows “a sign of openness of heart,” he added.
The pontiff encouraged everyone to invite Jesus to be their guest at Mass so that he can tell them how it is he sees them.
“It is very important that we see ourselves through his eyes: to see how frequently we reduce life to a competition, how anxious we become to obtain some sort of recognition, and how pointlessly we compare ourselves to others,” he said.
We experience the freedom Jesus wants for us, he added, when we stop to reflect and let ourselves “be taken aback by a word that challenges our hearts’ priorities.”
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This article was originally published on Catholic News Agency.
