Pope Francis is returning to Rome at the end of a 6-day, 3-city visit to the United States that ended with a celebration of Mass at the World Meeting of Families.
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Thousands at a time erupted into cheers as the pope passed.
The Argentine pontiff spent the first four days of his trip in Cuba, where, in Havana, he met with current President Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution, seat of the Cuban government.
“It felt like a time of renewal”, the Moscow resident said as she and other members of St. Catherine of Siena parish walked through downtown Philadelphia on Sunday. “It was totally worth the wait”.
As hundreds of catholic parishioners joined the millions in Philadelphia by jumbotron for the last and largest gathering of Pope Francis in the United States.
On his last day in the U.S. on Sunday, Francis met with five survivors of sexual abuse.
“Our common house can no longer tolerate sterile divisions”, the pope told an estimated 860,000 people. “If we learned anything this week from the wonderful visit of Pope Francis it’s that we should always keep listening”, Hartmann said. “That’s a good way of measuring our love“, Francis said.
“I was a little bit surprised that he seemed to set up that conversation about how all stages of life are valuable then followed that immediately up with a conversation about the death penalty and never went any farther”, Lankford stated.
“I don’t judge someone who can’t forgive”, he said, but said instead he prays for them. They clasped Francis’ hands, and two gave him a hug.
“Meeting them made me see once again how acts of destruction are never impersonal, abstract or merely material”.
“The family is handsome, but there’s effort involved and there are problems”, the pope said. “It’s the the same experience whether we got through the gates or not”. We can’t be exclusive. It indicated who we are as Catholics.
Local resident Daniel Madden and his wife Dana attended the Pope’s parade in Philadelphia this weekend, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, and they brought their young daughter Quinn along for the trip.
He says the only way to allow victims to heal is to allow their voices to be heard and criticized a recent comment from the pope in which he said he was sorry how the abuse scandal had weighed upon USA bishops.
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“We know the abuses are everywhere in families in the neighborhoods, in the schools, in the gyms”, he said.
