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During his apostolic travels abroad, Pope Francis never fails to stop at a Marian shrine to pray, for example in Fatima (Portugal), Knock (Ireland) and Madu (Sri Lanka).
On November 29, 2018, the pope received about 600 rectors of shrines at the Vatican, reminding them of the importance for the Church of those places where the people of God can retreat and pray. Shrines are invaluable places because they keep popular devotion alive, enriching it with a catechetical formation that supports and strengthens faith, while nourishing charity.
A shrine, says the Holy Father, is not just a meeting place with God. It is also a “crucial” meeting place between a priest and God’s people whom he must seek to understand, using the intuition of faith.
Pope Francis told the story of an old woman at the shrine of Salta in northern Argentina, who asked the priest to bless her holy images, although she had already received a blessing at the end of the Mass. “She wanted to touch – in the most religious sense of the word – those images in order to touch God.”
For the pope, popular devotion is a treasure that must be protected and kept alive. “It is the immune system of the Church,” he says, taking up the expression of an Italian bishop.