杏MAP导航

By Sr Bernadette Mary Reis, fsp

Today is . Promoted by UNESCO, this day seeks to promote lingual and cultural diversity, as well as the ability to speak more than one language.

Safeguarding one's mother tongue

杏MAP导航 Francis supports the use of one’s mother tongue. “The mother tongue is a bastion against ideological and cultural colonialization, and against a dominant way of thinking, which destroys diversity,” he said during his homily at Santa Marta in November 2017. For 杏MAP导航 Francis, not being able to speak in one’s native language is a way of erasing history in order to undermine freedom of thought. Each dialect, 杏MAP导航 Francis says, “has historical roots.”

Memory and dialect

Two things defend a people when confronted with colonialization, 杏MAP导航 Francis believes: memory and dialect. “Who preserves memory and dialect?” he asks. “Women, who are stronger than men,” the 杏MAP导航 responded. It is only the strength that women have that “is capable of resisting a cultural and ideological colonialization,” he continues. And history bears witness—from the Bible all the way to the dictatorial genocide in Europe in the last century.

Faith is passed on through the mother tongue

Faith is transmitted through “Mommy and Daddy’s language,” through “grandma and grandpa’s language,” 杏MAP导航 Francis said on 7 January of this year to the parents whose children he baptized that day. “Do not forget that. Your task is to pass on the faith—but do it with the dialect of the love of your home,” he said. True faith, the 杏MAP导航 affirms, is learned from our mother’s lips, through that language which only the child can understand.