Ireland: mgr. Martin, may grandparents share their stories with their grandchildren to arouse a “view of 2020”

“I call grandparents and grandchildren to share their stories – on the phone, on social media o in a video call – about how they are dealing with this coronavirus crisis. Perhaps the younger ones might record and capture this moment for the future”. With this encouragement, the Irish archbishop Eamon Martin relayed Pope Francis’s message for the 54th World Day of Social Communications that will be celebrated on Sunday. “In the years to come, when we look back on 2020, we will share with the future generations the story of how the world had to stop”, the archbishop writes on, hoping in the ability to “connect the things we learnt from this experience of a pandemic”, as if defining a “view of 2020” as of a time in which “we learnt to appreciate each other more: our family, our old people, our friends, those who work in the frontline, our priests – and all this because we had to spend some time apart”. As well as reading the Pope’s message for the Day, mgr. Martin encourages everyone “to reflect on the power of the ‘history’ in our journey – that is, as Pope Francis writes, lingering on “the history of Christ”, that “is not a legacy of the past, but is our story, and always timely”.
Valentina Bombelli