![\"20160427-a\"](\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/20160427-a.jpg\")
<\/a>Photo: Lorenzo Russo<\/p><\/div> \u201cHearing you speak, two images came to my mind: the desert and the forest. I thought: these people, all of you, take the desert to transform it into a forest. You go to where the desert is, to where there is no hope, and do things that make the desert turn into a forest. The forest is full of trees, it\u2019s full of greenery, but too disordered. . . but that\u2019s how life is! And passing from a desert to a forest is quite a job that you do. You transform deserts into forests! Then, you see what things in the forest can be put in order. . . But there is life there [in the forest], not here: in the desert there is death. There are so many deserts in the cities, so many deserts in the lives of people who have no future, because there\u2019s always \u2013 and I underscore a word that you spoke about here \u2013 always there is prejudice and fear. And these people must live and die in the desert, in the city. You do the miracle with your work of changing the desert into a forest: carry on with what you are doing! But what is your work plan? I don\u2019t know. You get close and see what you can do. And this is life! You take life as it comes, like the goal keeper in football: he catches the ball from wherever it\u2019s thrown.\u00a0 . . from here, from there. . . You aren\u2019t afraid of life, afraid of conflict. Somebody once told me \u2013 I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true, I haven\u2019t verified it . . .\u00a0 if somebody wants to verify it they can \u2013 that the word \u201cconflict\u201d in Chinese is written with two signs: one sign that means \u2018risk\u2019, and another sign that means \u2018opportunity\u2019. Conflict, it\u2019s true, is a risk but it\u2019s also an opportunity.
<\/a>Photo: Lorenzo Russo<\/p><\/div> We can take conflict as something we should stay away from: \u2018No, there\u2019s conflict there. I\u2019ll stay away from it.\u2019 We Christians know well what the Levite did, what the priest did, with the poor man who fell on the road. They crossed the street so they wouldn\u2019t see, so they wouldn\u2019t be close to him (see Lk. 10:30-37). Those who don\u2019t risk can never get close to the reality, to know the reality. But even to know with the heart, it\u2019s also necessary to get close. And to get close is a risk, but also an opportunity for me and for the person I get close to; for me and for the community I get close to. I\u2019m referring to the testimonies you have given; for instance, in the prisons and with all your work. Conflict. Never, never turn away in order not to see a conflict. Conflicts have to be assumed, evils have to be assumed to resolve them. The desert is ugly, whether it is the one in the heart of all of us, or whether it is the one in the city, in the peripheries: it\u2019s something ugly. Also the desert that is in gated communities. . . It\u2019s ugly, the desert is also there. We mustn\u2019t be afraid to go into the desert to transform it into a forest: there\u2019s exuberant life there, and you can go and dry many tears so that everyone can smile. That Psalm of the People of Israel when they were in prison in Babylon makes me think so much: \u2018We cannot sing our songs, because we are in a foreign land\u2019. They had instruments there with them, but they didn\u2019t have any joy because they were hostages in a foreign land. But when they were liberated, the Psalm says, \u2018we couldn\u2019t believe it, our mouths were filled with smiles and laughter\u2019 (see Psalm 137). This is how it is in this passage from the desert to the forest, to life, there\u2019s a smile. I give you a task to do \u2018at home\u2019. One day, look at people\u2019s faces when you go along the street: they\u2019re worried, everyone is closed in on himself. The smile isn\u2019t there, the tenderness isn\u2019t there. In other words, social friendships, social friendship isn\u2019t there. Where there\u2019s no social friendship there\u2019s always hatred, war. Look at the geographic map of the world and you\u2019ll see this. Instead, social friendship that most often has to be made with forgiveness \u2013 the first word \u2013 with forgiveness. Most often it is made by getting close: I\u2019ll get close to that problem, to that conflict, to that difficulty as we have just heard these courageous teenagers do in the places where there is gambling and so many people lose everything there, everything, everything. I\u2019ve seen elderly women in Buenos Aires going to the bank to receive their pensions and immediately to the casino! Get close to the place of conflict. And these youngsters go, they approach, they get close. And there\u2019s another thing that has to do with play, with sport and also with art. It\u2019s gratuitousness. Social friendship is made in gratuitousness, and this wisdom of gratuitousness is learnt: it\u2019s learnt through play, through sport, through art, through the joy of being together, of getting close. And this word, gratuitousness, is a word that must never be forgotten in this world in which it seems that if you don\u2019t pay you can\u2019t live, in which it seems that the man and the woman that God created precisely to be at the centre of the world, to be also at the centre of the economy, has been thrown out and we have at the centre a lovely god, the god of money. Now the god of money is at the centre of the world, and those who can draw near to adore this god, they draw near. . . and those who can\u2019t end in hunger, disease, exploitation. . . Just think of the exploited children and young people. Gratuitousness is the key word, gratuitousness that leads me to give my life as it is, I go with others and make this desert become a forest. Gratuitousness, this is something beautiful! And forgiveness, forgiveness also, because with forgiveness rancour, resentment goes away. And then building up, always building up and never destroying. So these are the things that come into my mind. And how are you doing this? Simply in the awareness that we all have something in common, we\u2019re all human. And within this humanity we get close to one another, to work together. \u2018But I belong to this religion, of that religion. . .\u2019 It doesn\u2019t matter! Everyone steps up to work together. Respect one another, respect one another! And so we\u2019ll see this miracle: the miracle of a desert that becomes a forest. Thank you so much for all that you do! Thank you.\u201d Earth Day 2016 <\/strong> Pope Francis\u2019s words at the \u201cEarth Village\u201d <\/em><\/strong> Rome, Italy, Villa Borghese Sunday, April 24, 2016<\/em> Source:\u00a0Vatican.va<\/a> Pope Francis at the Mariapolis\u00a0<\/a> https:\/\/vimeo.com\/164066584 https:\/\/vimeo.com\/164233694<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The following is the complete English translation of the Pope\u2019s off-the-cuff remarks during the Focolare event at Villa Boreghese. The event was promoted by the Focolare Movement for the Mariapolis in the city of Rome and sponsored by Earth Day Italy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}