ACI Prensa Staff, 17 November, 2025 / 1:30 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Leo XIV sent a message Nov. 17 to participants in the meeting for “Building Communities that Protect Dignity,” promoted by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
The Holy Father said that efforts to build communities where the dignity of minors and the most vulnerable is protected and promoted are a matter that he holds “deep in his heart.”
The pontiff explained that “dignity is a gift from God” and that it is not something obtained through merit or force but rather “a gift that precedes us: It is born from the loving gaze with which God has loved us individually and continues to love us.”
“In every human face, even when marked by weariness or pain, there is a reflection of the Creator’s goodness, a light that no darkness can extinguish,” he affirmed.
The pope thus emphasized that “by taking responsibility for the lives of others, we learn true freedom, the kind that does not dominate but serves, that does not possess but accompanies.”
