This afternoon, Pope Francis arrived shortly after 16.00 at the House of the Sisters Disciples of the Divine Master for a meeting with about one hundred priests of the Diocese of Rome ordained in the last ten years.

After greeting the community of religious sisters and the people involved in the services of the structure, with their families, in the crypt, the Pope went up to the church, where the meeting took place.

After the reading of the Word of God and a moment of prayer, and after the greeting from Bishop Di Tolve, a conversation took place between the Pope and the priests present.

The central theme of the dialogue included the experience of the first years of priesthood and the happy discovery of the faith of the people, but also the challenge of service to the sick, to be responded to with closeness, compassion and tenderness, and the crises one encounters in priestly life. “One never emerges from a crisis alone”, the Pope affirmed.

Mention was also made of the diocese of Rome, its development, its beauty, some weaknesses, to be confronted not with chatter but with dialogue, and the synodal path, including the risk of reducing it to a slogan instead of experiencing it as a way of living the Church. In this regard, the Pope quoted from Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, “topical, a jewel, which holds up our pastoral work”, and the value of fatherliness, a charism that must grow in the priest.

The dialogue also touched the theme of loneliness in the city, of how to experience closeness to others, even in difficult relationships, and Pope Francis underlined the importance of being close to the elderly, as a “test of closeness”, asking oneself “do I go to visit them, do I listen to them?”, and to do so modestly.

In greeting the young priests, the Pope invited them to the next celebration of Corpus Domini, to take place on Sunday 2 June, and thanked them for the prayer and the frankness of the dialogue.