Pope urges compassion as he wraps Slovakia pilgrimage

SASTIN – Pope Francis urged Slovakians connected Wednesday to look retired for the neediest among them arsenic helium ended his archetypal post-surgery travel with a immense open-air Mass that drew tens of thousands of radical amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Cheering, maskless crowds lined Francis’ motorcade way done Sastin, 15 kilometers (about 10 miles) from Slovakia’s occidental border, and they were rewarded with a slow-moving popemobile jaunt and a smiling, waving Francis arsenic helium arrived astatine the immense field.

Organizers said 45,000 radical had preregistered to attend, showing impervious of COVID-19 vaccination to person a barcode that gave them introduction to the site. A fewer 1000 non-vaccinated pilgrims were allowed successful with impervious of a antagonistic trial oregon having been cured of the virus. Hardly anyone successful the assemblage wore look masks.

The venue was the Our Lady of Sorrows nationalist shrine, Slovakia’s astir important 1 dedicated to the Virgin Mary, wherever St. John Paul II prayed successful 1995. Each Sept. 15, pilgrims from Slovakia and beyond flock to Sastin connected the feast time of Slovakia’s patron, with immoderate this twelvemonth spending the nighttime connected the dusty tract to get a amended spot.

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“You tin ideate that I’m excited due to the fact that he’s from Latin America,” said Erick Montalvo, a pilgrim from Mexico. “You consciousness it similar you are benignant of adjacent to him due to the fact that of that. And that’s a precise bully feeling.”

During his homily, Francis urged the pilgrims to unfastened their hearts to compassion and unrecorded a religion “that identifies with those who are hurting, suffering and forced to carnivore dense crosses.”

He called them to unrecorded a “faith that does not stay abstract, but becomes incarnate successful fellowship with those successful need,” helium said.

The Mass was Francis’ lone large lawsuit Wednesday earlier helium returns to Rome aft a four-day pilgrimage to Budapest, Hungary and Slovakia, a mostly Roman Catholic state of 5.5 cardinal people.

The purely spiritual finale capped a sojourn that featured delicate authorities diplomacy — Francis met with right-wing populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban connected Day 1 — and outreach to Slovakia’s Jewish and Roma communities.

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The travel was Francis’ archetypal since undergoing intestinal country to region a 33-centimeter (13-inch) chunk of his colon successful July. He has appeared successful bully signifier and tone passim the grueling itinerary, seemingly energized by the crowds aft being cooped up successful the Vatican for implicit a twelvemonth of COVID-19 restrictions.

Francis has astatine slightest 2 different trips planned earlier the extremity of the year: a speedy travel to Glasgow, Scotland, to enactment successful the U.N. clime league successful November, and a travel — not yet confirmed by the Vatican — to Greece, Cyprus and Malta successful December.

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Karel Janicek reported from Prague. Philipp Jenne contributed to this report.

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