A morning at a Wednesday papal audience turned into an “unforgettable” moment for the Archdiocese of Sydney’s Michael Digges who was pleasantly surprised by an opportunity to exchange a few words with Pope Leo XIV and even more stunned to find that the 2028 Eucharistic Congress in Sydney is top of the Holy Father’s mind.
Digges was near the front of the crowded St Peter’s Square accompanying his fellow pilgrim Therese Poulton from Sydney City South parish.
“He came over to us and suddenly he’s looking at me in the face, looking me straight in the eyes,” said the archdiocese’s Executive Director, Administration and Finance.
“I said, ‘Holy Father we’re from Sydney’, he said ‘Oh very good, you’ve come a long way’. I said ‘We’ve got the Eucharistic Congress,’ he said ‘Oh yes, in 2028.’
“He said to have a good trip, and thank you for your prayers.
“I answered, ‘Always Holy Father’ and then he went on to the next person.
“He stopped and spoke with every person individually, gently, with no rush, he was just so calm.”
Digges was part of a pilgrimage group of around 40 Sydney parishioners and clergy in Rome led by Bishop Daniel Meagher in Rome to be part of the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.
In his homily for the Mass concluding the event, part of the program for the Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Leo said families are the cradle of the future of humanity.
“As soon as we were born, we needed others in order to live; left to ourselves, we would not have survived,” he said at the Mass celebrated on 1 June in St Peter’s Square.
“Someone else saved us by caring for us in body and spirit. All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.
“That human kindness is sometimes betrayed. As for example, whenever freedom is invoked not to give life, but to take it away, not to help, but to hurt. Yet even in the face of the evil that opposes and takes life, Jesus continues to pray to the Father for us.
“His prayer acts as a balm for our wounds; it speaks to us of forgiveness and reconciliation. That prayer makes fully meaningful our experience of love for one another as parents, grandparents, sons and daughters.”
Pope Leo added that the world today needs the marriage covenant “in order to know and accept God’s love and to defeat, thanks to its unifying and reconciling power, the forces that break down relationships and societies.”
In the family, faith “is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts.
“In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.”
Speaking to married couples, the pope said that “marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful,” and enables them, “in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.”
