“Patience is one of the great virtues of Christian tradition … Be patient as your Heavenly Father is patient,” he urged.
Bo, the archbishop of Yangon, said that in his homeland of Burma (officially known as Myanmar), the Church had been “tested through its patience,” especially in the last six months with the “multi-layered challenges” of “COVID, coup, collapse of the economy, and climate changes.”
“Catholics have suffered a lot. Our churches have been attacked. Many of our people are refugees in our own land,” he said.
After the Feb. 1 military coup in Burma, Bo supported non-violence in the protest movement and called on Catholics to help the suffering and pray unceasingly for peace.
The International Eucharistic Congress is taking place in the Hungarian capital on Sept. 5-12.
Bo was the papal legate at the previous International Eucharistic Congress in the Philippines in 2016.
Pope Francis will attend the congress to offer the closing Mass on Sunday. He will be the first pope to take part in an International Eucharistic Congress since the year 2000.
Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference, began the congress events on Sept. 8 with a meditation on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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Masses were offered at several churches in Budapest as a part of the congress program on Wednesday.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, the former prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, was due to offer a Mass at the Church of the Holy Angels in Gazdagrét and a Byzantine Divine Liturgy was celebrated at St. Stephen’s Basilica.
“I strongly feel this Eucharistic Congress is the starting point of global healing,” Cardinal Bo said in his catechesis.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.
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