Pope Francis to 2024 International Eucharistic Congress: The Eucharist teaches us fraternity

Pope Francis delivers a video message to participants in the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress, taking place in Quito, Ecuador, Sept. 8-15, 2024. The Eucharist teaches us how to have, the pope said in his message recorded at the Vatican, “a profound brotherhood, born of union with God…” / Credit: screenshot of video from Holy See Press Office

Rome Newsroom, Sep 8, 2024 / 12:05 pm (CNA).

The gift of the Eucharist helps us to become the body of Christ for others, Pope Francis said in a video message sent to the 2024 International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, on Sunday.

The Eucharist teaches us how to have, the pope said in his message recorded at the Vatican, “a profound brotherhood, born of union with God, born of allowing ourselves to be ground, like wheat, so that we can become bread, the body of Christ, thus participating fully in the Eucharist and in the assembly of the saints.”

The 53rd International Eucharistic Congress is taking place in Quito, Ecuador, Sept. 8–15, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the country’s consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Over 20,000 people will attend the congress from at least 40 countries around the world. More than 1,500 children will make their first Communion during the opening Mass on Sept. 8. The theme of the 2024 international congress is “Fraternity to Heal the World.”

Pope Francis’ message arrived in Quito, where the first National Eucharistic Congress was held in 1886, while he is in the midst of an 11-day journey to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore.

In the video, he referenced the Church Fathers St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Ignatius of Antioch.

The Church Fathers told us, he said, “that the sign of bread kindles in the People of God the desire for fraternity, for just as bread cannot be kneaded from a single grain, so too must we walk together, for ‘though we are many, we are one body, one bread.’”

The pope also pointed to the example of Venerable Sr. Angela Maria of the Heart of Jesus (born Maria Cecilia Autsch) — a German Trinitarian Sister of Valencia who was imprisoned and died in the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps during World War II — for her “proactive” fraternity.

“Even before she was arrested, when the evil that was looming over the world was already evident, she invited her little nieces and nephews who were approaching Holy Communion for the first time, invited her relatives who had drifted away a bit, and invited even those who had remained devout, to rebel against that evil with simple and, in certain areas, dangerous gestures,” he said, “to get as close as possible to the Sacrament of the altar, to rebel by taking Communion.”

Venerable Angela found in the Eucharist “a bond that strengthens the vigor of the Church itself, a bond that strengthens this vigor among its members and with God, and for her it was ‘organizing’ the plot of a resistance that the enemy cannot rout, because it does not respond to a human design,” Francis continued.

“It is these simple gestures that make us more aware of the fact that if one member suffers, the whole body suffers with him,” he said.