“The Christian has no persecution complex, does not see enemies everywhere, does not accuse anyone, does not provoke anyone”. This was stated by , Secretary of State, celebrating mass on 12 July in the ancient basilica of Aquileia, on the occasion of the feast of the holy martyrs Ermacora (bishop) and Fortunato (deacon), patrons of the diocese of Gorizia. Several bishops from the region concelebrated with Parolin.

By calling disciples his friends, the cardinal explained: “Jesus strips them of their mundanity”, He takes them away from the “opposite friendship” of the world. And the world, according to the evangelist John, is when humanity, that is all of us, shuts in itself, in a mentality that is only “earthly” and in a culture capable of tolerating only what resembles and belongs to it”.

“In this sense - the Secretary of State continued - the world only loves what it knows and is in accordance with it. The world does not love Jesus’ disciples, because it understands that it is no longer the foundation of their existence. The act of election of Christ, in fact, gives a new foundation to the existence of those men and women who, through the Gospel, are attracted, fascinated and, finally, transformed by God. The hatred of the world (a very unpleasant subject and very little “politically correct”, but absolutely evangelical!) is directed against what the world itself previously loved because it was its own, and which now no longer is, because it has been snatched from it”.

“But this hatred towards the disciples - Parolin said - is only a small reverberation of that hatred, which is much more rooted, against He who made the liberation of humanity the purpose of His own existence! He is the only one strong enough to snatch man from himself and from perdition: and the first Christians understood this well! Jesus consciously accepted this hatred, and continued to carry out the mission for which the Father sent him: to love humanity, save the world from hatred and from every other fallacious “wisdom”, overcome evil with goodness, inaugurate the Kingdom of God”.

Then, Pope Francis’ prime minister explained how the hatred of the world, “is simply the other side of Jesus’s revelation and the election of his disciples. In a certain sense, it is the sign that distinguishes the faithful disciple, but not in the sense that the disciple is fatally destined to arouse hatred or must deliberately foment hatred or, much less, can boast of it”.

“The hatred of which the Gospel speaks to us - the Secretary of State said - is not the fruit of a form of religious paranoia: the Christian has no persecution complex, does not see enemies everywhere, does not accuse anyone, does not provoke anyone, knows that he himself is called to continuous conversion! Hatred, on the contrary, is simply what the “worldliness” of the world reveals to each individual with respect to the Gospel: its closing, its distance, its misunderstanding, its different hierarchy of values”.

“This world, which is inside and outside of us - Parolin concluded - perennially tempted to distance itself from love, not to open itself to the Light, that is to Christ and his works of life, for fear of being dissolved, for fear of having to change our opinion, habits, certainties ... For fear of being loved and of loving, this world – I was saying - still remains the ultimate object of God’s love for which He gave his son. My brothers and sisters, let us learn first of all not to hate, and above all not to hate those whom we truly love, when we see that their lives call our own into question”.