Pope visits parish in a neighborhood battling drug crime

This 2nd Sunday of Lent brought the Pope to the parish of Ascensione di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo, located in the east of the capital. Administered by a community of Dehonian priests, it serves the working-class neighborhood of Quarticciolo, which is plagued by drug trafficking and crime.

Before Mass, the Pope met with a delegation of elderly, sick, poor, and disabled people cared for by parish volunteers. He also spoke with several mothers of incarcerated drug addicts.

"Faced with the many complex problems of this area, which weigh heavily on your daily lives here, your mission is to teach the perspective of faith that transforms everything into hope," the Pope told parishioners in his homily. "It is precisely in the face of the mystery of evil that we must bear witness to our Christian identity," he said, encouraging them to make "the Kingdom of God perceptible" by taking into account their specific context.

Commenting on the readings of the day, the Pope recalled the nomadic existence led by the prophet Abraham. Life, he assured, is like "a journey that requires trust […] that calls us and sometimes asks us to leave everything behind."

The danger, explained the Bishop of Rome, is to do as St. Peter did in the Gospels, who, out of fear of the future, sometimes became the "spokesperson for our old world and its desperate need to stop things, to control them."

"A bit like when we don't want a dream, in which we take refuge, to end," he pointed out.

Leo XIV emphasized how futile it is to "want to control everything" in one's life. By fleeing the "precariousness" that characterises existence, he said, we also lose the opportunity to discover a "true treasure," like Abraham, who eventually found the Promised Land.

"We too, if we allow ourselves to be called by faith to journey, to make new decisions about life and love, will cease to fear losing something, because we will feel that we are growing in a wealth that no one can steal from us," the Pontiff assured. This "treasure," he said, is the "light" that God transmits to us.

And God, the Pope said, calls Christians to pass on the light of their faith in turn, "beginning with the neighborhood where we live."

In this sense, he congratulated the parishioners for all the initiatives launched to strengthen the community of Quarticciolo and to care for its youth.

The Pope is scheduled to visit two more Roman parishes during Lent: Santa Maria della Presentazione, in western Rome, on March 8; and Sacro Cuore di Gesù, in the north, on March 15. The latter is located in the Ponte Mammolo neighborhood, home to the Rebibbia prison, which had one of the holy doors during the Jubilee of Hope.