Pope at Palm Sunday Mass: Love the abandoned Christ, love Christ in the abandoned (Vatican Press Office)

On April 2, Pope Francis, battling a hoarse voice, presided at Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square. Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, vice dean of the College of Cardinals, was the principal celebrant.

“Brothers and sisters, today let us implore this grace: to love Jesus in his abandonment and to love Jesus in the abandoned all around us,” the Pope preached. “God has not left us alone; let us care, then, for those who feel alone and abandoned. Then, and only then, will we be of one mind and heart with the one who, for our sake, ‘emptied himself’ (Phil 2:7).”

Among the abandoned, said the Pope, are “unborn children, the elderly who live alone: they could perhaps be your father or mother, your grandfather or grandmother, left alone in retirement homes, the sick whom no one visits, the disabled who are ignored, and the young burdened by great interior emptiness, with no one prepared to listen to their cry of pain.”