Holy Father Pope Francis while addressing the faithful gathered at Casa Santa Marta conveyed the significance of knowing and using one’s own mother tongue. His Holiness highlighted that memory and dialect are the two things that defend people when confronted with colonization and said that women, who are stronger than men and exhorted that it is only the strength that women have that “is capable of resisting a cultural and ideological colonialization.

As reported by Vatican Radio, Holy Father Pope Francis remarked that “The mother tongue is a bastion against ideological and cultural colonialization, and against a dominant way of thinking, which destroys diversity.” Further, His Holiness added, “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 has historical roots.”

His Holiness Pope Francis concluded his remarks by reminding that “True faith, is learned from our mother’s lips, through that language which only the child can understand.”