Papal plea for compassion
Pope Francis focused his oneday visit yesterday to the wealthy northern Italian city of Milan on those marginalised by society, visiting families in a housing project and exhorting clergy and nuns to minister to the peripheries.
The papal itinerary, which also included lunch with inmates at the city’s main prison, underscored Francis’ view that the neglected outskirts of cities offer a better view of reality than their welltended, prosperous centres.
He told thousands of faithful at the housing project that it was important for the Catholic Church ‘‘not to remain in the centre to wait, but to go toward everyone, in the peripheries, to go toward also non-Christians and non-believers’'.
And later in the heart of Milan at the grand, Gothic-era Duomo Cathedral, the Pope urged priests, nuns and deacons to take their mission to the peripheries ’’to rekindle hope that has been put out and sapped by a society that has become insensitive to the pain of others’’.
‘‘In our fragility as a congregation, we can become more attentive to the many fragilities that surround us and transform them into a blessing,’' Francis said.
The visit to the world’s largest Roman Catholic diocese, with more than 5 million faithful, and the home of his main competition in 2013 for the papacy, Cardinal Angelo Scola, marked a resumption of the Pope’s regular pastoral visits after a year-long hiatus because of the Jubilee Year of Mercy commitments in Rome.
Scola greeted the Pope at the Duomo, presenting him with a golden chalice, and also had another gift more in line with Francis’ example: He announced the diocese had bought 50 apartments to serve the homeless.
During an intense day, the Pope traversed the city multiple times, travelling to say Mass in a park north of Milan attended by 1 million faithful.
For his final appointment, Francis met youths who made the sacrament of confirmation this year and their families in Milan’s San Siro Stadium, which is home to the rival AC Milan and Inter Milan football clubs. – AP