POPE TALK | KAIROS GLOBAL | JULY 2025

Author: Dr Kochurani Joseph

• Peace is possible by acknowledging, understanding, and surmounting disagreements. Authentic peace takes shape from the ground up when the differences and conflicts that entail are not set aside but acknowledged, understood, and surmounted.

• It was on the eve of His passion that Jesus spoke of the need for unity, ‘that all may be one… so that the world may believe.’ My wish for each of us, then, is that we can say with St Augustine: ‘My entire hope is exclusively in your very great mercy. Grant what you command, and command what you will.’

• Science must serve humanity, never its master. There is an authentically human approach to science and researchers follow interdisciplinary dialogue to pursue truth grounded authentically in human and respectful of the integrity and dignity of the human person.  

• By receiving the Lord’s peace and accepting His call, which includes being open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, all the followers of Jesus can immerse themselves in the radical newness of Christian faith and life.

• The courage to love reminds us, above all, of the need to make every effort to live out the commandment of love, the call to unity, and the mandate to serve others.

• The lack of hope is sometimes due to the fact that we fix on a certain rigid and closed way of seeing things. It is the experience that happens when situations, people, sometimes even those we have trusted, take everything from us and leave us in the middle of the road. The most important part of the entire event is listening to God’s voice, which makes everything else possible.

• The practice of worship does not automatically lead to being compassionate. Indeed, before being a religious matter, compassion is a question of humanity! Before being believers, we are called to be human. Haste, so present in our lives, very often impedes us from feeling compassion. One who thinks his or her journey must be the priority is not willing to stop for another. One truly helps if one is willing to feel the weight of the other’s pain. 

• It is beautiful that, when we consider our calling, the responsibilities and people entrusted to us, the commitments we take on, and our service in the Church, each one of us can confidently say: although I am fragile, the Lord is not ashamed of my humanity; on the contrary, He comes to dwell within me.

• Let us pray that through work, each person might find fulfilment, families might be sustained in dignity, and that society might be humanised.

• When someone speaks to you, wait until they finish to understand them well, and then, if you feel led, say something. But the important thing is to listen. Listening as the first act of communicating. Listening, seeing, and experiencing first-hand before reporting, especially on the many deep wounds that lacerate the body of our humanity.

July

For Formation in Discernment

Let us pray that we might again learn how to discern,

to know how to choose paths of life, and reject everything that leads us away from Christ and the Gospel.