Pope greets group with Alzheimer's and their choir

Bonheiden group with Rainbow Choir

Source: Vatican Media

Before the General Audience in St Peter's Square today, Pope Francis greeted representatives of a home for the elderly with Alzheimer's from Bonheiden, Belgium. Among them was the Rainbow Choir that is attached to the home.

The group of elderly people with Alzheimer's disease, who are a pilgrimage to Rome, sang for the Holy Father with the choir, in the Vatican's Paul VI audience hall.

Many people with memory loss are still able to to remember prayers and hymns. With their singing, the Rainbow Chorus of Bonheiden helps residents in the home come together daily to pray and attend Mass. Singing with the choir, the elderly find a link that connects their past and present. Hence, their singing is a cure. The Pope was moved to hear them sing together.

Speaking to them off the cuff, the Pope said that their singing together was a "consolation, a support, that helps to move forward and to bear the burden of the disease that certainly makes itself felt." He said their singing is made more precious by their vulnerability. "I think that sharing our frailties and accepting them reciprocally, is the most beautiful "song", a harmony most pleasing to God, a "rainbow" not of perfection but of imperfections!" the Pope said.

Addressing the choirmaster as the "baton of tenderness" the Pope explained how with gestures every conductor on the podium holds the voices or instruments together. In this case, the Pope said, it is a very special gesture, "a gesture of tenderness that makes us all more human."

The Pope pointed out that with all their tenderness, they have fulfilled the fourth commandment - of honouring the elderly who are our memory. Perhaps some of them have lost their memory, but they are the symbol of the memory of a people, they are the roots of their homeland, of our humanity. "They are the roots, and young people must come to them to have the sap from their roots to carry forward the civilization," the Pope said.