Support Believers Who Suffer for Their Faith

Vatican City: December 28, 2009, (PCTV Newsdesk)

At midday today the Pope appeared at the window of his private study overlooking St. Peter's Square to pray the Angelus with thousands of faithful gathered below.

"The One lying in the manger", said the Holy Father, "is the Son of God made man, Who asks us to bear courageous witness to His Gospel, like St. Stephen who, filled with the Holy Spirit, did not hesitate to give his life for love of his Lord. He, like his Master, died forgiving his persecutors and helps us understand how the entry of the Son of God into the world gave rise to a new civilisation, the civilisation of love which does not cave in before evil and violence but breaks down barriers between men, making them brothers in the great family of the children of God".

"Stephen's witness, like that of the Christian martyrs, shows our fellow men and women, so often distracted and disoriented, in whom they must place their trust in order to give meaning to life. The martyr is, in fact, the person who dies in the certainty of being loved by God and, placing nothing before love for Christ, knows he has chosen the right side".

Benedict XVI explained that "today, presenting us St. Stephen the Deacon as a model, the Church is also showing us that acceptance and love for the poor is one of the privileged ways to live the Gospel and to bear credible witness before the world of the Kingdom of God that is to come".

After then highlighting how the Feast of St. Stephen "also reminds of us the many believers who, in various parts of the world, undergo trials and suffering for their faith", the Pope called upon people to "support these people with prayer and never to fail in our own Christian vocation, always placing at the centre of our lives Jesus Christ, Who in these days we contemplate in the simplicity and humility of the manger".