Vatican City - Pope Francis baptised 13 babies in the in the splendour of the Sistine Chapel on the day the Church celebrates the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord urging parents to teach children to celebrate their baptism anniversary each year just like their birthdays.

“Thank you for bringing your children here, for letting them enter the Church”, he said, and repeating the exhortation he has made many times in the past, the Holy Father invited parents and godparents to talk to their children about their baptism, to celebrate its anniversary, and thank God for this grace of becoming Christians.

Teach your children the date of their baptism, it’s like a birthday, because with Baptism we are reborn into Christian life.”

Pope Francis told the parents of the girls and boys whom he ushered into the Catholic Church through baptism that they have the responsibility of making sure their children keep to the path they were put on today.

He urged them to teach the little ones to pray when they are small, because he said, “prayer is what gives strength throughout life, in good times to thank God, and in bad times to find strength."

In particular, he invited them to teach the children to pray to Our Lady, our mother, who is always close, especially to those who stray: “Mothers are like that, and that is great."

As he has in the past, Pope Francis reassured the parents putting them at ease, and telling them to let the babies cry, to feel free to nurse them if they were hungry, and to make sure they weren’t too warm.

The important thing he said, is “May they learn to be Christians.”

“Today is a feast day. The feast of the beginning of a beautiful Christian journey in which you will help your children to go forward. Thank you for your decision to bring them to be baptised!”

The tradition of baptising the children of Holy See employees in the Sistine Chapel on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord was established In 1981 by Pope St. John Paul II.
-VN