Catholic World News: Pope’s Lenten Message: Focus on ‘Integral Ecology’

By Catholic World News, February 01, 2024

“If our celebration of Lent is to be concrete, the first step is to desire to open our eyes to reality,” writes Pope Francis in his Lenten Message for 2024.

The Pope’s message, entitled Through the Desert God Leads us to Freedom, was released on February 1, with a Vatican press conference introducing the document and discussing its main themes.

Pope Francis likens the penitential season of Lent—which begins on Ash Wednesday, February 14—to the journey of the Hebrew people through the desert, from oppression in Egypt to freedom in the Holy Land. He tells the faithful that “even today we remain under the rule of Pharaoh.”

That rule, the Pontiff continues, is “a model of growth that divides and rubs us of a future. Earth, air and water are polluted, but so are our souls.” The rule of Pharaoh, as he explains it, also extends to a “king of attraction to the security of familiar things, to the detriment of our freedom.” …

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