All members of the Church have been asked by Pope Francis to strip themselves of the “cancer” of “worldliness” on a moving visit to Assisi which seemed to crystallise the pastoral aims and style he has sought to inculcate in the first seven months of his pontificate.
“It is really ridiculous that a Christian, a true Christian – be that priest, sister, bishop, cardinal, pope – chooses to follow this path of worldliness, which is a homicidal attitude,” he said on the 4 October Feast of St Francis, the central Italian town’s most famous saint and his papal namesake.
The Argentine Pope said such worldliness “kills the soul … kills persons … [and] kills the Church”. He made his unscripted remarks in the very place where St Francis stripped himself of his worldly possessions, becoming the first Pope in 800 years to visit the site.
The Pope began his non-stop, 12-hour visit to Assisi at an institute for severely disabled children and young adults. He moved among the residents, slowly greeting and caressing each of them one by one. “We are among the wounds of Christ,” he said afterwards. “Here Jesus is hidden in these kids, these children, these persons … on the altar we adore the flesh of Jesus, in them we find the wounds of Jesus,” he went on, amid the sound of moans and cries.
During a mid-morning outdoor Mass next to the Basilica of San Francesco where the beloved patron saint of peacemaking and care for Creation is buried, the Pope said the peace that St Francis embodies is “not some saccharine sentiment” or “sort of pantheistic harmony with the cosmos”. Rather, he said his peace instructs us to “take on the yoke of Christ” and love one another.
Pope Francis paid private visits to several sites linked to St Francis’ life, as well as speaking at separate gatherings in the diocesan cathedral with priests and pastoral workers and in the Basilica of Santa Chiara with the cloistered community of Poor Clare nuns.
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