Rome, 20 August (LaPresse) – "Forgiveness reveals itself in all its power and manifests the concrete face of hope. It is not forgetfulness, it is not weakness. It is the ability to set the other free, while loving them to the end. Jesus' love does not deny the truth of pain, but it does not allow evil to have the last word. This is the mystery that Jesus accomplishes for us, in which we too are sometimes called to participate." Pope Leo XIV said this during this morning's General Audience in the Paul VI Hall, where the Holy Father met with groups of pilgrims and faithful from Italy and around the world. ‘How many relationships are broken, how many stories become complicated, how many unspoken words remain suspended,’ he continued. "Yet the Gospel shows us that there is always a way to continue loving, even when everything seems irreparably compromised. Forgiving does not mean denying evil, but preventing it from generating more evil. It is not saying that nothing happened, but doing everything possible so that resentment does not determine the future.‘ ’Let us ask today for the grace to know how to forgive, even when we do not feel understood, even when we feel abandoned,‘ added Pope Leo. ’Because it is precisely in those moments that love can reach its peak. As Jesus teaches us, to love means to leave the other free — even to betray — without ever ceasing to believe that even that freedom, wounded and lost, can be snatched from the deception of darkness and restored to the light of goodness."