Pope Francis: Protect the poor and the Earth
VATICAN CITY — After a week marked by acts of simplicity and openness, Pope Francis finally let his words do the talking as he officially began his stewardship of the Catholic Church on Tuesday.
“Please,” he implored the tens of thousands, both poor and powerful, gathered outside St. Peter’s Basilica. “Let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.”
It was a message Pope Francis has hinted at, but now he made it clear, as he urged the economic, political and religious leaders arrayed before him not to allow “omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world.”
On a day of warm, blue skies, the 76-year-old pope thrilled the crowd as he arrived in the sun-drenched piazza in an open-air jeep, shouting “Ciao!” to well-wishers and kissing babies handed up to him.
At one point, as he neared a group of people in wheelchairs, he signaled for the jeep to stop, hopped off and approached a disabled man held up to the barricade by his family, blessing him and then kissing him on his forehead.
It was a gesture from a man whose short papacy so far has been defined by such spontaneous forays into the crowd, which seem to surprise and concern his security guards.
The Argentine native is the first pope from Latin America and the first named for the 13th-century friar St. Francis of Assisi, whose life’s work was to care for nature, the poor and the most disadvantaged.
In Buenos Aires, thou- sands of people packed the central Plaza de Mayo square to watch the ceremony on giant TV screens, erupting in joy when Francis called them from Rome, his words broadcast over loudspeakers.
“I want to ask a favor,” Francis told them in Spanish. “I want to ask you to walk together and take care of one another. ... And don’t forget that this bishop who is far away loves you very much. Pray for me.”
Back in Rome, Francis was interrupted by applause as he declared his role as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics was to open his arms to “the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.”