Mary is a mother of sinners, not the corrupt

Even the greatest sinners can find a loving mother in Mary, while those who are corrupt find refuge only in their own blind and selfish desires, Pope Francis said.

In a book that was scheduled to be released Oct. 10, 2018 in Italian, the pope said Mary is unable to enter the hearts of corrupt men and women because they have made the "satanic" choice of "locking the door from the inside."

"Mary cannot be the mother of the corrupt because the corrupt would sell their own mother, they would sell their belongings to a family, to a people," the pope said. "They look for their own profit, whether it's economic, intellectual, political, of any kind."

The book, titled "Ave Maria" (Hail Mary), features reflections on the Marian prayer made by Pope Francis during an interview with Fr. Marco Pozza, a prison chaplain in the northern Italian city of Padova.

… The pope said he imagined that throughout Mary's life, she remained a "normal woman" despite the extraordinary circumstances of being the mother of God, and "she is a woman that any woman from this world can imitate."

"Mary was normal. She worked, she did grocery shopping, helped her son, helped her husband—normal," he said. "Normality is living with the people and like the people. It is abnormal to live without roots within a people, without a connection to a historical people."

Without those connections, the pope said, a sin can arise that "Satan, our enemy, likes so much: the sin of the elite."

"The elite do not know what it means to live among the people. And when I speak of elite, I do not mean a social class—I speak of an attitude of the soul," he said … Those who recognize their sins can experience Mary's motherly protection because she "is mother of all of us sinners, from the greatest to the least holy."

"That is the reality," the pope said. "If I told myself that I wasn't a sinner, I would be the greatest corrupt person."

Junno Arocho Esteves, Catholic News Service – Oct 8, 2018