At the end of January I concluded my visit to Portugal and the meeting with the Definitors of the Iberian Peninsula. This land, which once saw a strong and incisive Franciscan presence flourish, today presents me with a different face, marked by the fragility and aging of our fraternities. Yet, precisely in this seemingly weak reality, I noticed luminous signs of an authentic pilgrimage of hope.
Our brothers live immersed in deeply secularized societies, where the voice of faith becomes increasingly weak and where our presences become smaller and more humble. The great structures of the past, which once spoke of a strong and visible presence of the Order, today appear to us as clothing too loose for our reduced fraternities. But it is precisely in this vulnerability that I have recognized a particular grace: that of rediscovering the essentials of our vocation as friars minor.
I have seen brothers who, even in their advanced age, continue to keep watch in the meantime, like sentries who scrutinize the horizon. They do not limit themselves to guarding memories of a glorious past, but know how to read the signs of the times with eyes of faith. Their fidelity to their vocation, seen in a context which frequently appears indifferent or hostile, becomes itself a silent prophecy.
This new minority is not the result of a strategy or of a planned choice. Rather, it is the humble reception of a condition which is given to us. In it we rediscover the grace of simply being brothers who walk with their people, sharing in the concerns and the hopes of this time. The daily gestures of proximity, patient listening, faithful prayer all become the places where the promise of God, which continues to be fulfilled in the world, is manifested.
I met fraternities which knew how to make their weakness a strength, no longer seeking prestige or social relevance, but witnessing with humility the beauty of a gifted life. Some brothers have shared with me how this condition of greater numerical and structural poverty has helped them rediscover the joy of little things, the importance of authentic relationships, the value of silent but faithful presence.
There is certainly no lack of concerns about the future, questions about how to accompany this process of transformation, the uncertainties about how to manage the structures and presences that we can no longer maintain. But I have seen that, where there is the willingness to welcome this new season as a time of grace, there also flourish the seeds of unexpected novelty.
This pilgrimage to the Iberian Peninsula reminded me that hope is not linked to numbers or structures, but to the creative fidelity with which we know how to live our charism today. The promise of God continues to be fulfilled, perhaps in ways that we would not have imagined, through the humble witness of brothers who know how to be “minors”, not only in name, but in the concrete condition of their life.
