‘It is the voice that attracts God’s tenderness.’
Pope Francis has a love and admiration for parents and children like no other.
The Holy Father has often expressed that a baby crying during church is a sound “to rejoice in,” according to Aleteia. The pope again made his feelings known before beginning the catechesis during his General Audience today.
After noting that due to coronavirus, he must stay at a distance from the pilgrims, Pope Francis shared with the audience that while he was reading the Biblical passage, his “attention was caught by that baby boy or girl over there who was crying, and I was watching the mama who was cuddling and nursing the baby and I said, ‘this is what God does with us, like that mama.’ With what tenderness she was trying to comfort and nurse the baby. They are beautiful images.”
“Never silence a crying baby in Church. Never, because it is the voice that attracts God’s tenderness.”
He went on to thank the woman for her witness and expressed that the “tenderness of a mama is a symbol of God’s tenderness with us.”
The pope is known for finding similarities between a parent’s love and God’s love and tenderness.
In 2018, during the Alfie Evans trials in the UK, where parents battled over the life of their terminally ill baby, the pope compared Alfie’s dad and his effort to save his son’s life to an image of God the father.
According to the Vatican News, while listening to Alfie’s father, the pope expressed, “I admire you for the courage you have, you are so young but you have the courage to defend your son’s life.”
