Pope rebukes those ‘ravenous’ for money, power during Christmas Eve mass

Pope Francis denounced humanity’s “greed for consumption” and rebuked those “ravenous” for money and power as he presided over Christmas Eve mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday.

Speaking to approximately 7,000 faithful, Francis reflected on the humility and poverty of the manger, the first resting place of Baby Jesus.

“In order to rediscover the meaning of Christmas, we need to look to the manger,” the Holy Father said when celebrating the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord with Mass.

“Yet why is the manger so important? Because it is the sign, and not by chance, of Christ’s coming into this world,” he said. “It is how he announces his coming. It is the way God is born in history, so that history itself can be reborn.”

Describing the manger as a “feeding trough” that enables food to be consumed by animals more quickly, Francis said that it could also “symbolize one aspect of our humanity: our greed for consumption.”

“While animals feed in their stalls, men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, ‘consume’ even their neighbors, their brothers and sisters,” he said, adding that such human greed mostly affects “the weak and the vulnerable” — including children.

“How many wars have we seen! And in how many places, even today, are human dignity and freedom treated with contempt!” he said, without naming any conflicts.

“This Christmas, too, as in the case of Jesus, a world ravenous for money, power and pleasure does not make room for the little ones, for the so many unborn, poor and forgotten children,” especially those “devoured by war, poverty and injustice.”

The manger should also teach Christians about poverty and humility, according to the Argentine-born pope: There wasn’t much around it, just “hay and straw, a few animals, little else,” he said.

“Yet that is where Jesus was born,” Francis added. “The manger reminds us that he was surrounded by nothing but love: Mary, Joseph and the shepherds; all poor people, united by affection and amazement, not by wealth and great expectations.”

“Jesus was born poor, lived poor and died poor,” he later concluded. “He did not so much talk about poverty as live it, to the very end, for our sake.”

At the end of the traditional Christmas celebration, the 86-year-old pontiff — who suffers from sciatica, has problems with his right knee, and hinted at a possible retirement earlier this year — was pushed in a wheelchair along the basilica to place a statue of Baby Jesus in a manger in a nativity scene.

With News Wire Services