ADDRESS OF POPE FRANCIS
TO THE FILIPINO COMMUNITY
ON THE OCCASION OF THE BLESSING
OF THE MOSAIC OF SAINT PEDRO CALUNGSOD

Vatican Basilica
Thursday, 21 November 2013

I thank my brother Cardinal Tagle, for his words full of faith, full of pain and full of hope. Recently I too was close to your people. And I felt that the trials were tough, too tough! But I also felt that the people were strong! What the Cardinal has said is true: faith comes from ruins. The solidarity of all in a trying moment. Why do these things happen? We cannot explain them. There are many things that we cannot understand. When children begin growing up they do not understand certain things, and they begin to ask their father and mother questions: Why father? Why? Why? Psychologists call this the “age of the why”, the “age of the whys”. Because a child does not understand... And if we are careful we will see that the child does not wait for his father or mother’s response, he will continue to ask why.... The child is insecure and needs his father and mother to look at him. He needs his parents’ gaze, he needs the heart of his parents. In these moments of great suffering, do not tire of asking: “why?” as children do.... And thus you draw our Father’s eyes to your people; you draw the affection of our Father in Heaven upon you. Like a child asks: “Why? Why?”. In moments of pain, let this strength be prayer: the prayer of the “why?", without asking for explanation, asking only that our Father to watch over us. I am with you in this prayer of the “why?”.