Credit: Rome Reports
Meeting with thousands of Italian grandparents and their children and grandchildren, Pope Francis insisted repeatedly, “Love makes us better.”
“Love makes us better; it makes us richer, and it makes us wiser, at any age,” he said 27 April to the young and old who filled the Vatican audience hall. “Love makes us better.”
Joining people associated with the Età Grande Foundation, which lobbies for the rights of the elderly to stay in their homes with family, community and government support, Pope Francis spoke about his grandmother Rosa, who first taught him to pray.
He then mimicked grandparents everywhere by handing out chocolates to the children.
The pope told the families, “You make each other better by loving each other. And I say this to you as a ‘grandfather’ with the desire to share the ever-youthful faith that unites all generations” and which “I received from my grandmother, from whom I first learned about Jesus who loves us, who never leaves us alone, and who urges us to be close to each other and never to exclude anyone.”