Holy Mass in Manaus (11 July 1980)

On 11 July 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Mass in Manaus. In his homily, the Pope addressed in particular he missionaries, with regard to the Indios. “The Church wants to dedicate itself to the Indians today, as it has done since the discovery of Brazil with regard to their ancestors.”

Mr Archbishop Apostolic Administrator,
my brothers in the episcopate and in the ministerial priesthood,
dear men and women religious, beloved brothers and sisters.

1. In the program of an intensely longed-for pastoral trip like this one to Brazil, the Pope had a very special desire for this visit to the Amazon and specifically to the beautiful city of Manaus, capital of this great state. I would like to know this original reality and hardly comparable to everything I have been able to observe in other parts of the country. I would like to offer the people of this region the possibility of "seeing Peter" in the humble person of his successor. Before this missionary Church of yours I would like in a special way to pay sincere homage to the missions and to the missionaries in general.

I therefore address my greetings to you who are present here and, through you, to the populations and dioceses of the States of Amazonia and Acre, of the territories of Rondonia, Roraima and Amapà. I also greet the representatives of the group that has come from Venezuela.

For you I offer the Eucharistic sacrifice. I leave you my blessing. I pray for your material well-being and the increase of your faith. I accompany your life and your work, your anxieties and your hopes.

However, I ask you to allow me to address your missionaries in a special way at this moment of our Eucharist. By speaking to them, I will be speaking indirectly about you and to you. By confirming them in their mission, I confirm in the faith this ecclesial community nourished and supported by them.

I still wish to address a special thought to the significant group representing the entire population that constitutes the "indios" people and I essentially repeat what I said yesterday in the meeting I had with them. The Church wants to dedicate itself to the Indians today, as it has done since the discovery of Brazil with regard to their ancestors. Blessed José de Anchieta in this sense is a pioneer and in a certain way a model for generations and generations of Jesuit, Salesian, Franciscan, Dominican, Capuchin, missionary of the Holy Spirit or of the Precious Blood, Benedictine, and many others.

With worthy perseverance, they tried to transmit the Gospel to the Indians, and offer them all possible assistance, in view of their human advancement.

I entrust to the public authorities, and to the other leaders, the wishes that flow from my heart in the name of the Lord, that the Indians, whose ancestors were the first inhabitants of this land, be recognized the right to inhabit it in peace and serenity!

They are afraid, even panicked, of being driven out for the benefit of others, from a vital space which means not only a basis for their survival, but even the preservation of their physiognomy as a people!

To this complex and thorny situation I would like a thoughtful, pertinent, intelligent response to be given in favor of all. In this way, the dignity and freedom of each of the Indians will be respected and promoted, as human persons and as a people!

2. Dear missionaries: Bishops, priests, men and women religious, lay men and women: as I meet you today, a thought accompanies me: less than twenty years ago divine providence wanted the then Archbishop of Krakow to be intensely and deeply involved in the preparation of one of the most important documents of the Second Vatican Council, which he would later sign together with thousands of other fathers. In those memorable days of an eminently ecclesial Council, I experienced the reflections, studies and debates which would define the Church as the People of God gathered together by virtue of the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as a sign and instrument of the communion of men among themselves and of humanity with God, as the sacrament of salvation for the world to which it is sent. They would also proclaim that, by virtue of this, this Church is essentially missionary. Paul VI would have vigorously taken up this word in his masterful apostolic exhortation "Evangelii Nuntiandi ” on evangelization: “The whole Church is missionary” (Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi , 59; Ad Gentes , 35).

Therefore, in this missionary Church I am aware that, by virtue of the papal ministry which a mysterious plan of God has entrusted to me, I am primarily responsible for missionary action. It was this precise responsibility that brought me to Brazil, that made me come to you and that prompted me to speak to you today with great openness of heart.

3. Above all, I wish to bring you stimulus and... encouragement in your missionary work.

This is certainly a demanding task: it almost tore you away from your native country or from other regions of Brazil, as well as from the bosom of your family: it now confronts you with a reality that is most often thorny and difficult; it requires work from you, the fruits of which you probably won't be able to reap.

How can we be surprised, then, if on certain days you feel this task burdening you like a weight that, for the moment, seems beyond your strength? In these moments, as indeed in all the others, the following must be sources of comfort and courage for you:
- the intimate conviction that it was not you who presented yourselves for this mission of yours, for any human reason: you were chosen and summoned by the first and supreme missionary, our Lord Jesus Christ;
- the certainty that your work is not only useful and necessary, but indispensable for the construction of the Church in this portion of land which, I well know, you have adopted as your own;
- the affection and gratitude that the good people to whom you proclaim the Gospel have for you;
- finally, I say this with absolute sincerity, the immense appreciation that the Pope has for your work, the respect, admiration and fraternal friendship that he has for you.

4. In addition to these expressions of encouragement, would you like the Pope to tell you something more about your mission?

Here it is: in this portion of the Church to which God has led you by the hand, be what you have become: true evangelizers. True evangelization, according to the stimulating perspective of “ Evangelii Nuntiandi”, is fundamentally the explicit announcement of Jesus Christ the redeemer of man and of his good news of salvation. And consequently the joyful and hopeful communication of the revelation of God's fatherhood, of his plan of love, of his kingdom which begins in this world and tends towards his fullness in eternity. It is also the proclamation that in Christ and through Christ a man renewed in justice and holiness is born and that, with new men, a new society must be born governed by the norms of the beatitudes and inspired by the charity that generates fraternity and solidarity. Every work of evangelization therefore aims at arousing, deepening and consolidating the faith and, in the light of the faith, at making possible a more just and more fraternal society. 

As far as faith is concerned, in this country you meet a large number of baptized people, a deeply religious people, who turn to you as ministers of Jesus Christ. Due to a series of historical circumstances, among which the persistent shortage of priests and other sacred ministers stands out, the edifying popular piety of the majority of this population does not correspond to an adequate formation both in terms of knowledge of the word of God and of fundamental truths, both at the level of sacramental practice, and again at the level of the insertion of religion into life and into its various aspects.

On the other hand, you find yourself faced with many situations of poverty, ignorance, disease, marginalization which demand the disinterested and effective attention of all those who can help the integral human development of these great popular masses.

5. Your missionary activity prompts you to reveal to everyone, young or old, the "mystery hidden for centuries" ( Col 1:26), to show them the face of God, to feed them with the sacraments, to teach them the way of prayer, the spirit of the beatitudes. But to this activity is added the much that you will also have to do to help the needy in their promotion, in passing from situations of misery and abandonment, unworthy of God's children, to more humane conditions of life. So did legions of missionaries before you, in Brazil itself and in Latin America.

What matters however - and I say this here in homage to the conscience that you certainly also have - is that the price of your action in favor of the material promotion of people does not even remotely involve a decrease in your strictly religious activity. This would be a dangerous counter-testimony, all the more serious if you were to give the impression of doing so under the impulse of some ideological imperative. Experience, on the other hand, shows that the testimony, pronouncements and action of the Church, at any of its levels, only have credibility and true efficacy in the social field if they are based on even more intense testimonies, pronouncements and action in its field. principal, which is the education of faith and sacramental life. If the Church really does this,

6. I would like to add another word, brief but full of feelings: it is the message of a priest to his brother priests. It is the invitation that I want to leave you as a reminder of my visit, so that you may be so profoundly missionaries that for you this is not just a title, albeit a beautiful and glorious one, but the deepest content of your priestly life. In other words: I wish that being a missionary is the raison d'être of your life, the profound inspiration of your action, the secret of your spirituality.

Your model in missionary spirituality, what else could be better than Christ himself, missionary of the Father, constantly immersed in the adoration of this heavenly Father and constantly given, up to the final donation on the cross, to the work of saving men, in total obedience to the will of the same Father? May your most radical inner attitude be that of good shepherds full of compassion towards all those whom God entrusts to your zeal, capable of knowing them as the shepherd knows his sheep, ready to feed them with the word and the sacraments, to defend them, to consume for they are your time, your talents, your energies and life itself. Your concern always in the light of this missionary spirituality, both to evangelize even more with the witness of your life than with your words. “Forma factus gregis”, wrote Saint Peter to the first missionaries at the dawn of the Church (1Pt 5,3): "be models to the flock", the humble successor of Peter tells you today, in this meeting with you. May your constant stimulus be an immense charity, the charity which is reflected in us of Christ's love, which Saint Paul said literally impels us: it stimulates us like a goad and makes us walk. Here, on the banks of the great river, how can we fail to tell you: "Aquae multae non potuerunt extinguere caritatem" ( Cant 8:7)? The copious waters of the Amazon River will not be able to quench the great love for God and for your brothers and sisters that brought you here, on the contrary they are an image of the immensity and vigor that this love must have.

7. One more word: a moving tribute to the thousands of missionaries who, from the years of discovery until today, have struggled throughout Brazil, and particularly in the Amazon region: "praedicaverunt verbum veritatis et genuerunt ecclesias" (they preached the words of truth and begat churches) (St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 44,23: CCL XXXVIII, p. 510). How many have come from their homelands of Europe never to return, how many quickly exhausted their youthful energies, consumed by fatigue or disease, how many met their death swallowed up by the waters, or sleep their last sleep under some nameless mound in a corner of the immense forest? I kneel before each of these tombs and even more before each of these figures of missionaries, men like us, with defects and weaknesses, but magnified by the testimony of the complete gift of themselves to the missions.

They are your forerunners: never give in to the easy temptation to think that the mission begins with you, but lean on the much that these brothers of yours have left you. May many of them who contemplate the face of God today be your intercessors.

Among them, some have received the glory of the altars such as the martyrs of the Rio Grande and, a few days ago, Blessed José de Anchieta, to whom we venerate. Others, hidden from the eyes of men, have found, in the light of the risen Christ, the reward for their sacrifices. May they obtain from God, for you, the courage in dark hours, the joy of serving with loving generosity, and above all the fidelity that makes you never look back, but walk always drawn to the Lord who one day will have to tell you, on the evening of your life: "Well done, good and faithful servant..., share in your master's joy" ( Mt 25:21). This will be the definitive word, the reward of your efforts, the synthesis of your life.

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