As part of the Fratelli Tutti Foundation’s second World Meeting on Human Fraternity, Pope Francis took part in a roundtable discussion with children.
During the discussion, he asked the children, “What does happiness mean?”, “Where can happiness be bought?”, and “How can we get in touch with God?”
The Pontiff signed a two-page Children’s Declaration on Fraternity, which Vatican News—the news agency of the Dicastery for Communication—reported was drafted by the children.
If the Vatican news agency’s account is true, then the children have a remarkably sophisticated knowledge of twentieth-century Argentine literature. Citing Francisco Luis Bernárdez—a poet whom the Pope has mentioned a few times in recent years—the children (or other authors of the Declaration) stated:
Our roots remind us that, despite the diversity of branches, we share the same life, the same dream, that of a world where love is the only fruit that can truly make us happy because, as the Argentine poet Bernardéz wrote, “’what the tree has in bloom, lives from what it has buried.”