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Pope Leo has spent the last Sunday of his summer holiday celebrating Mass for local homeless people and sharing lunch with them.
At 9.30 a.m. on Sunday 17 August, the Holy Father arrived at the Shrine of Santa Maria della Rotonda in Albano, a medieval Marian sanctuary founded by Eastern-rite religious fleeing iconoclasm.
He offered Holy Mass for more than one hundred people cared for by the local branch of Caritas, together with the volunteers who support them.
In his homily he said that a “fire of charity” had brought them together and urged the faithful “not to distinguish between those who assist and those who are assisted, between those who seem to give and those who seem to receive, between those who appear poor and those who feel they have something to offer in terms of time, skills, and help.”
Afterwards the Pope invited those present to pranzo della domenica, the traditional multi-course Sunday meal, at Castel Gandolfo. The menu included lasagna as the primo and roast veal as the secondo.
Leo is no stranger to work among the poor. As an Augustinian missionary in Trujillo and Chulucanas he lived among some of the poorest communities in northern Peru.
In the 1980s and 1990s the country was torn by conflict between the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path and government forces, a war that left some 70,000 dead. During this period a bomb destroyed the church door and the missionaries were warned to leave within 24 hours or be killed. Fr Prevost chose to remain.
Service to the poor is likely to be a central theme of his pontificate. A week after his election on 8 May he said: “We must give voice to the poor. They are not a burden; they are a treasure for the Church and for humanity. Their cry is often ignored, but it reveals to us the reality of the world and the priorities of the Gospel.”
