At a question-and-answer session during Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain, a young woman named Desirée shared a heartbreaking story.
When she was little, her father tried to kill her mother. A young man stepped in to protect her and was killed instead. Her father went to prison, and her mother became addicted to drugs.
When she was 10, social services intervened. After some time in a children’s home, Desirée was placed in a loving family and eventually baptized. But as she grew in her faith, she found herself asking God a question many of us have whispered in the dark: “Where were you?”
She put two questions to the Pope. How can I forgive my father? And how can I truly reconcile with God?
Pope Leo told her, “We cannot attribute to God what has been entrusted to our responsibility.” If violence happens, if love among family members curdles into hatred, the honest question isn’t “Where was God?” but a question about us, about a humanity that sometimes becomes a prisoner of its own evil. And forgiveness, he reminded her, is a journey rather than a single act, one that never requires returning to a dangerous relationship or pretending
