Grandparents have an important role to play in the family and in society through their intercessory prayer and their sharing of their memories, Pope Francis said at “The Blessing of a Long Life,” a September 28 encounter with the elderly in St. Peter’s Square.
Urging the young to visit the elderly, Pope Francis also reflected on nursing homes:
But it is not always the case that the elderly, the grandfather, grandmother has a family that can accommodate them or upon which they can count. So we welcome the houses for the elderly, so that they can truly be homes, not prisons! We hope that these homes will truly serve the interests of older persons and not the interests of someone else! There must never be institutions where the elderly are forgotten, hidden or neglected.
But there is also the reality of the abandonment of the elderly: how many times we discard older people with attitudes that are akin to a hidden form of euthanasia! The culture of discarding human beings hurts our world. We discard children, young people and older people under the pretense of maintaining a “balanced” economic system, the center of which is no longer the human person, but money. We are all called to counter this culture of poisonous waste!
During his homily at the Mass that followed, Pope Francis upheld the visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth as a model of encounter between the young and the elderly.
“Mary shows us the way: she set out to visit her elderly kinswoman, to stay with her, to help her, of course, but also and above all to learn from her-- an elderly person-- a wisdom of life,” the Pope said.