Pope Francis delivers his message during his weekly general audience, in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
Advertisement
Pope Francis is escorted under an umbrella during a thunderstorm at the end of his general audience, in St.Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
Pope Francis is sheltered from the rain as he gets into a auto at the end of his general audience, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
The consolidation of those departments into a single new entity is part of a broader reform of the Roman Curia desired by Pope Francis, and worked out in conversation with his nine-member council of cardinal advisers from around the world.
On Wednesday Francis announced a new dicastery for “Promoting Human Development” which will be led by Cardinal Peter Turkson, a 67-year-old Ghanaian who now runs the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and is close to the Pope.
VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis has praised Colombia’s peace deal but has declined an invitation to have a Vatican envoy help select judges for the proposed truth and justice commission.
While Cardinal Turkson will lead the new office, a section dedicated to refugees and migrants will be led “ad tempus” (for the time being) directly by the pope, who will “exercise it in the manner he deems appropriate”, the statutes state.
The new ministry is being created by merging four existing departments dealing with justice, health, development and migrants and itinerant people.
His first trip outside Rome as pope was to the island of Lampedusa, destination for migrants smuggled from Libya.
Since the beginning of his papacy, Francis has insisted that issues of justice for the poor, conflict resolution and combating what he describes as a “throwaway culture” must be absolute priorities for the Catholic Church. And most recently, he brought a dozen Syrian refugees home with him when he visited the hard-hit Greek island of Lesbos to show solidarity with new arrivals.
Advertisement
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis addressed the participants in a major worldwide gathering of the European Society of Cardiology on Wednesday.
