On the Sunday before the opening of the special Synod on the pastoral care of the family and evangelization, Pope Francis wanted to invite grandfathers and grandmothers to Rome and coined a new beatitude for the families of their children: «Blessed are those families who have grandparents neighbors. The grandfather is a father twice and the grandmother is a mother twice." On that occasion he also wanted to greet Pope Benedict with an affectionate nickname of "grandfather", also expressing the joy of his closeness, "because it is like having a wise grandfather in the house". 

There were more than forty thousand grandparents alongside Pope Francis and Benedict XVI. Their presence was a gift given not only to the universal Church, but to civil societies of different cultural origins so that they always pay greater attention to the fruitful presence of the elderly. Grandparents are the living memory necessary to build the present and look to the future with confidence.  

For this reason the Pope maintained that «Old age, in a particular way, is a time of grace, in which the Lord renews his call to us: he calls us to safeguard and transmit the faith, he calls us to pray, especially to intercede; he calls us to be close to those in need. The elderly, grandparents have an ability to understand the most difficult situations: a great ability! And when they pray for these situations, their prayer is strong, it is powerful!

«Grandparents, who have received the blessing of seeing their children's children (see Ps 128,6), are entrusted with a great task: to transmit the experience of life, the history of a family, of a community, of a people; sharing wisdom with simplicity, and the same faith: the most precious inheritance! Blessed are those families who have grandparents nearby! 

 Alongside the bliss for his children, Pope Francis did not remain silent about the hardships and difficulties of many elderly people, as well as the temptation to financially exploit their difficult situation. «The elderly, the grandfather, the grandmother, do not always have a family that can welcome them. So homes for the elderly are welcome, as long as they are truly homes, and not prisons! And let them be for the elderly, and not for someone else's interests! There must not be institutions where the elderly live forgotten, hidden or neglected. I feel close to the many elderly people who live in these institutions, and I think with gratitude of those who go to visit them and take care of them. Homes for the elderly should be "lungs" of humanity in a town, in a neighborhood, in a parish; they should be "sanctuaries" of humanity, where those who are old and weak are cared for and cherished like an older brother or sister. It's so good to visit an elderly person! Look at our kids: sometimes we see them listless and sad; they go to visit an elderly person, and they become joyful!

«But there is also the reality of the abandonment of the elderly: how often are the elderly discarded with attitudes of abandonment which are a real hidden euthanasia! It is the effect of that throwaway culture that does a lot of harm to our world. Children are discarded, young people are discarded because they have no work, and the elderly are discarded with the pretense of maintaining a "balanced" economic system, at the center of which there is not the human person, but money. We are all called to counter this poisonous throwaway culture!

"We Christians, together with all men of good will - continued the Pope - are called to patiently build a different, more welcoming, more human, more inclusive society, which does not need to discard those who are weak in body and in the mind, indeed, a society that measures its "pace" precisely on these people. As Christians and as citizens, we are called to imagine, with imagination and wisdom, the ways to face this challenge. A people who do not look after their grandparents and do not treat them well is a people who have no future! Why does it have no future? Because it loses its memory and tears itself away from its roots."

The generations of the present are entrusted with the responsibility of vitalizing the roots of the family so as to remain living trees, which even in old age do not stop bearing fruit. How to give life to these roots? The Pope suggests using "prayer, reading the Gospel, and practicing works of mercy".

Pope Francis greeted the elderly by wishing them to have the beautiful joy of "caressing a child and letting themselves be caressed by a grandfather and a grandmother".