The Pope delivered a strange message on March 27, 2020, in full pandemic confinement, in a deserted Saint Peter’s Square. Francis invited everyone to have “the courage to open spaces where all can feel called, and allow new forms of hospitality and fraternity, as well as solidarity.” What are these new spaces?
On June 7, 2022, the papal message was placed in the “biodiversity vault” on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, along with the seeds of all food crops on the planet, stored at a temperature of -18° C.
On June 12, 2023, the same message was placed in a satellite, Spei satelles. It is now in orbit at an altitude of 525 km, in a 2 x 2 x 0.2 mm nano-pound version. Anyone with a UHF-band amateur radio can pick up a broadcast from the satellite on 437.5 MHz, and hear excerpts of the Pope’s message as it passes overhead.
In fact, it is feared that this humanitarian message will go over the heads of many people.
A website makes it possible for a person to follow the evolution of the space mission and to register his name in a memory chip on board Spei satellites. “You too can be a guardian of hope together with Pope Francis. Fill out the form and commit yourself to doing a good deed on earth so that there is hope and fraternity for all. Your membership will be inserted in a chip that will fly on board Spei Satelles. Your name will be written in heaven because you have chosen to sow hope on earth.”
Is the Pope’s seed of hope, buried at -18° and projected at an altitude of 525 km, the new evangelization that he wishes to promote, that of a “Church that goes forth,” in search of the “peripheries”… icy or orbital? Isn’t it time to land and return to the Gospel “quite simply,” as St. Francis de Sales said?
Jesus left us this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. Which is the least indeed of all seeds; but when it is grown up, it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come, and dwell in the branches thereof” (Mt. 13:31-32).
Gospel mustard seed should not be frozen or sent into space on a satellite. It must be sown in the souls of the baptized so that it may bear fruit.
The following is a reflection by Fr. Alain Lorans, SSPX.