Pope Francis entreated Catholics to fight for Naples’ soul during a weekend visit to the Mafia-ridden city that he said heralded a springtime of redemption.
On Saturday morning tens of thousands of pilgrims packed into the southern-Italian city’s main square, the Piazza del Plebiscito, which had been hung with tapestries depicting local saints for the Papal Mass.
There he told the Neapolitans, whose city is home to the notorious Camorra Mafia syndicate: “Do not allow hope to be stolen from you. Do not give in to the lure of easy money or dishonest income. React firmly to organisations that exploit and corrupt the young, the poor and the weak, with the cynical drug trade and other crimes. May corruption and delinquency not disfigure the face of this beautiful city.”
He urged criminals “as a brother” to convert, and noted that the first day of spring – “a time of hope” – coincided with his visit.
“With the grace of God, who forgives all, it is possible to return to an honest life,” he said. “Even the tears of the mothers of Naples, mixed with those of Mary, the heavenly Mother invoked in Piedigrotta and in many churches of Naples, ask this of you. These tears melt the hardness of hearts and lead all back on the path of goodness.”
He said repeatedly: “God lives in Naples” then stirred the crowd to shout three times, “Jesus is Lord”.
Pope Francis began his day at the Shrine in Pompeii, where just after 7am he entrusted his visit to Mary and prayed she accept: “our miseries, the many streets of hate and blood, the thousands of ancient and new poverties and above all, our sins.”
He landed in Naples in the city’s over-populated Scampia quarter, an area with one of the highest rates of unemployment in Italy. He met with its residents in the St John Paul II Square and told them that their greatest resource was joy.
“It is hope, as you well know, that is your great patrimony, this 'lever of the soul', so precious, but also so exposed to assault and robbery. One who voluntarily sets out on the path of evil steals a piece of hope. … He steals it from himself and from others, from the many honest and hard-working people, from the good name of the city, from its economy,” he said.
He foreshadowed his call for hope and redemption by asking those assembled to cleanse their city’s soul of “the odour of corruption”.
The blood of the city’s patron saint, St Januarius, liquefied after it was venerated by Pope Francis in Naples Cathedral in the afternoon, the first time this has happened in the presence of a pope since 1848.
“The blood has half liquefied, which shows that St Januarius loves our Pope and Naples,” Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of Naples told the congregation.
Pope Francis responded that this meant they were only half converted: “We must try harder!”
Following the Mass Pope Francis had lunch with inmates at Naples' Giuseppe Salvia Detention Center of Poggioreale. Later he met with young people on the city's waterfront before returning to the Vatican in the evening.
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