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gon gon/IX. Evangelii Gaudium, the Joy of the Gospel according to Pope Francis

Question 9.147

The enthusiasm of African Catholics is manifested during beautiful eucharistic celebrations, long pilgrimages, ancestral processions, or on the feast days of major saints. Francis rightly recalls the importance of this piety, inasmuch as some people who are puffed up by rationality would like to tone down their importance.

The witness of the people is beautiful because it is expresses outwardly an intense interior life. Popular piety publicly manifests what Christ accomplishes in the secret depths of their hearts. Hence it is easy to understand that the powers-that-be want to minimize their impact. …

Often popular piety is a way of inculturating the faith. In this way Christ enters into communion with the roots of a people who did not know him a little while ago. Popular piety is central to an authentic process of evangelization. I remember that Benedict XVI, during a private audience, confided to me that his most beautiful memory of his journey to Brazil was the touching piety of the people.

In Guinea, I wanted to start a penitential pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guinea, in Boffa. Some of the faithful may walk more than 125 miles to reach the shrine. The Catholics from the most distant regions travel more than 250 miles on foot, in particular those who come from my village of Ourous. The first few years, the local people who saw us walking asked whether we were fugitives, victims of an epidemic or a war. … Today, the welcome extended by all, Christians and Muslims, is tremendous. Although they are far from my land, I do not overlook the shrine of Kibeho in Rwanda, or the pilgrimages connected with the martyrs of Uganda.

For me, a son of an African country that is so poor, my first trip to Lourdes was unforgettable. Even today I cannot go to Paray-le-Monial, Ars, Lisieux, or the chapel on the rue du Bac without considerable emotion. I am impressed by the filial affection expressed by pilgrims of all ages who, in Fatima or Czestochowa, advance toward the Blessed Virgin or go around her icon on their knees, with a rosary in hand.

I am not surprised that Francis could write: “To understand this reality we need to approach it with the gaze of the Good Shepherd, who seeks not to judge but to love. Only from the affective connaturality born of love can we appreciate the theological life present in the piety of Christian peoples, especially among their poor. I think of the steadfast faith of those mothers tending their sick children who, though perhaps barely familiar with the articles of the creed, cling to a rosary; or of all the hope poured into a candle lighted in a humble home with a prayer for help from Mary, or in the gaze of tender love directed to Christ crucified. No one who loves God’s holy people will view these actions as the expression of a purely human search for the divine. They are the manifestation of a theological life nourished by the working of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5)” (EG 125).

I myself was deeply moved in July 2014, at Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, as people left church after Mass, when little Sibylle, with a big smile, offered me a drawing she had made. It was Christ on the Cross. I could make out Jesus very clearly, his hands and feet nailed to the Cross. At the top of the Cross, instead of the usual inscription “INRI”, Sibylle had written “Jerusalem”. And at the foot of it she had drawn the Virgin Mary, hands outstretched, with this caption: “Mary is weping (sic) because Jesus died on the cros (sic).” Children are marvelous! They sense the Heart of God and the mysteries of his love that meet us even in our serious sins and petty weaknesses.

Yes, the poor importune us, and the simple folk oblige us. Their joys are always interior. These people already experience a bit of the joy of heaven, and they will discreetly go there ahead of us.