Pope calls on Valencia seminarians to bring hope to devastated region

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In the wake of the deadly flooding that killed 216 people in Valencia, Spain, Pope Francis told seminarians and seminary staff from the region to immerse themselves in the suffering of their people and give them signs of hope.

During a meeting Jan. 30 at the Vatican, the pope said the community in and around Valencia experienced "a pain and grief that in spite of its hardness opens us to hope because, forcing us to touch the bottom and to leave behind everything that seemed to sustain us, it allows us to go beyond."

The weather phenomenon that caused the torrential rainfall, flooding and mudslides in October 2024 is not just "an atypical phenomenon that we simply hope will not happen again," he said. From a faith point of view, it is the "extrapolation of what every human being experiences when faced with a loss and feeling alone, out of place, in need of support to be able to continue."

He told the seminarians they are called to bring the tenderness of God to those living in darkness and urged them during the Holy Year to reflect on a passage from the Book of Isaiah, in which the prophet says God has anointed him " to bind up the brokenhearted."

The hope the seminarians are called to bring to their communities is different from mere optimism, which is a "light expression," the pope said.

"We cannot take people's suffering lightly and try to console them with particular phrases and do-goodism," he said. "Our hope has a name, Jesus, that God who was not disgusted by our mud and who, instead of saving us from the mud, became mud for us."

To be a priest, Pope Francis said, "is to be another Christ, it is to become mud amid the weeping of the people."

The pope told members of the group that when they encounter people in Valencia whose lives were shattered into pieces, they should offer them "pieces of yourselves, as Christ does in the Eucharist."

"Please, give yourselves freely," he said, "because everything you have you have received for free."