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During a visit to Latvia on Monday, Pope Francis recalled the past suffering of the Latvians, who have kept their faith for decades of Nazi and Soviet occupation, while warning against the return of isolationist sentiments that are reappearing in Europe. .
"Sometimes we see a return to the ways of thinking that would lead us to be wary of others, or we would show statistics that we would be better, more prosperous and safer," said the pope at a Mass at Basilica of the Assumption in the city of Aglona to the southeast.
In these moments, said the pope, the Virgin Mary invites us to "receive" our brothers and sisters, to take care of them in a spirit of universal brotherhood.
Thousands of faithful attended Rainy Mass at Latvia's largest Catholic sanctuary, a highly anticipated event on a four-day trip to the Baltic states. The venerated icon of the Basilica of the Mother of God was moved outside for the event, which took place on a square created during the visit of Pope John Paul II to Aglona in 1993, while Latvia was a nascent republic.
Mary "stands near those who suffer," the pope said in his homily, "including those who have been tried, sentenced by all, deported," he said, on the margins of society.
The pope arrived in Latvia Monday morning after two days in Lithuania. He travels to Estonia on Tuesday.
The trip has momentarily held back a whole slew of new accusations in the clergy abuse scandal that has plagued the Roman Catholic Church for two decades – even as Francis hoped to tackle the problems at a world meeting of bishops next year – and no doubt its biggest diplomatic coup: a tentative agreement reached with China on the ordination of bishops.
Earlier on Monday, Francis laid flowers at the Latvian Independence Monument in Riga, and then prayed alongside members of various Christian religions – Lutheran, Russian Orthodox, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian – at the same time. a prayer session in the Lutheran Cathedral.
The pope praised what he called one of Latvia's special features: a "lived ecumenism" that has enabled the country's various Christian churches to create "unity while retaining the richness and uniqueness of each one".
As he did in Lithuania, the pope recalled the tribulations of the recent history of the region, shaken by decades of Nazi and Soviet occupation, which Latvia has managed to overcome.
Latvia "has experienced difficult social, political, economic and spiritual struggles, the result of past divisions and conflicts, but today it has become one of the main cultural, political and maritime centers of the region" said Monday morning the pope.
The nation, he added, "has sought to become a place of dialogue and encounter, peaceful coexistence and forward-looking".
The pope's visit coincides with the centenary of the independence of three Baltic countries.
"You know too well the price of this freedom, that you had to win again and again," said the pope in his speech to the Latvian authorities on Monday. The spiritual roots of the country "have supported you and given you the creativity to generate new social processes," he said, "despite the currents of reductionism and exclusion that still threaten the social fabric."
During a meeting with the elderly in the St. James Cathedral in Riga, the capital, later in the morning, the pope acknowledged that some had experienced "the horror of war, then the political repression, the persecution and exile ".
"Neither the Nazi regime nor the Soviet regime could extinguish faith in your hearts," he said. "You fought the good fight. You ran the race. You have kept the faith.
