“The life of our communities must know how to benefit from the talents and charisms of so many elderly people who are already retired, but who are a wealth to be treasured.”
Pope Francis arrived at his live-streamed general audience sitting in the popemobile and greeted pilgrims while making several laps around St. Peter’s Square.
At one point, the pope asked the popemobile to stop and invited some children to ride on board with him.
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After greeting the pilgrims, the pope slowly walked up from the popemobile to his chair, where he remained seated for most of the audience. The pope concluded by leading the crowd in praying the Our Father in Latin.
The 85-year-old apologized again for not being able to stand to greet pilgrims during the traditional blessings of newlyweds at the end of the audience due to pain in his right knee.
“I would like to apologize because I will not be able to come to you today to greet you because of my knee: it is still hurting. You will have to walk a little to me, but it is all the same and I receive you with my heart in my hand,” Francis said.
The pope also offered a spontaneous prayer for the people of Sri Lanka, where eight people have died and 200 have been injured in violent protests in the past few days, according to the Associated Press.
Two Ukrainian women were in attendance at the pope’s audience: Kateryna Prokopenko, wife of Ukrainian Lieutenant Colonel Denis Prokopenko, and Arseniy Fedosiuk’s wife, Yulya. Their husbands are currently fighting in the last stand to defend the Azovstal steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukraine.
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Also among those in the crowd were major superiors of women religious from the United States and newly ordained priests with the Legionaries of Christ.
In the pope’s greeting to Polish pilgrims, he asked for the intercession of St. Stanislaus for vocations.
“May this strenuous defender of the divine moral order, especially in this week of prayer for vocations, obtain for all young people the gift of wise discernment of the path of life, of entrustment to Christ, and fidelity to evangelical values. I bless you from my heart,” he said.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.
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