In that moment, “Many” became less a statistic and more a summons. It named the unseen: many forgotten on the margins, many complicit in quiet ways, many aching for forgiveness they don’t have words to request. The pope did not list their failures or flatter their virtues; he simply acknowledged the crowded weight of both, as if to say the soul of a nation is never one thing.
His closing blessing refused to sort people into camps of villains and saints. By asking God to bless them all, he suggested that mercy is not a reward for the few but an atmosphere offered to the whole. The word that began as a riddle ended as a doorway: a call to look honestly at the fractures, to shield those most at risk, and to trust that grace can still multiply where courage finally tells the truth.
