Pope's Angelus message: the power of prayer, the power of faith
October 07, 2013
Pope Francis stressed the power of simple faith during his midday audience on Sunday, October 6.
“We all know people who are simple, humble, but with incredibly strong faith, who truly move mountains,” the Pope said. He recommended that the faithful continually ask Jesus, “increase our faith!” Prayer, he said, is “the breath of faith.”
Speaking to over 100,000 people—in a crowd that filled St. Peter’s Square and spilled over onto the Via della Conciliazione—the Pope said that it had been a “great gift” for him to be able to make a pilgrimage of Assisi the previous day, to mark the feast of St. Francis.
The Pontiff also reminded the faithful that October is a month of special dedication to the missions, and paid homage to the missionaries who “overcome all sorts of obstacles to spread the Gospel.” The month is also dedicated to the Rosary, and the Holy Father encouraged the faithful to pray the Rosary regularly, describing that prayer as “a school of faith.”
Pope Francis took note of the October 6 beatification of Roland Rivi, an Italian seminarian who was killed by Communists in 1945 because he was “guilty only of wearing a cassock during that time of raging violence against the clergy, who spoke out to condemn in the name of God the postwar massacres.”
Finally, the Pope asked for prayers for the immigrants who died in when their ship caught fire off the shore of Lampedusa three days earlier. “Let our hearts weep,” the Pope said. “Let us pray in silence.”
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