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Pope Francis urges young people not to be couch potatoes

For Francis, Jesus is the “Lord of risk … not the Lord of comfort, security and ease”.

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Islamists Abdel Malik, along with Adel Kermiche cut the throat of Father Jacques Hamel at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, on Tuesday.

He delivered it in his homily at Mass with the country’s bishops and 2,000 priests, religious and seminarians in the ornate shrine in Krakow dedicated to Saint John Paul II that was opened previous year.

“Pope John Paul II came here as a son of the Polish people”, Benedictus said.

Pope Francis was speaking on the final day of his official five-day visit to Poland which included a trip to the concentration camp, Auschwitz.

A nun takes photos as she waits for Pope Francis to arrive, at the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Krakow, Poland, Saturday, July 30, 2016.

The gathering of so many young people from countries torn by conflict, war, and other atrocities makes it so that the sufferings experienced by young people in these regions “are no longer anonymous, something we read about in the papers”, the Pope said.

Pope Francis says he won’t address child molestation allegations against a top Vatican Cardinal who is one of his most-trusted aides until justice officials in Australia have made a determination.

He is on a five-day visit to Poland to mark the 1,050th anniversary of the country’s adoption of Christianity.

“The house where they live does not belong to them”, Francis said.

Responding to hours of calls of “Papa Francesco!” and “Come to us!” from a crowd gathered in the street, Francis appeared in the “papal window” on Sunday.

For the second straight day, a huge crowd filled a vast field yesterday in the gentle countryside outside the city of Krakow to see Francis, who was visiting central and eastern Europe for the first time.

When he started the trip on Wednesday, Francis said the killing of an elderly priest in France by suspected Islamist militants and a string of other attacks were proof the “world is at war” but that it was not caused by religion.

He listened silently as Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, sang from Psalm 130 and a priest read the psalm in Polish, just metres (yards) away from the end of the single rail track where cattle cars brought hundreds of thousands of prisoners to the camp. Visibly emotional and wide-eyed, the youths boarded the vehicle and joined Pope Francis, waving at the crowd.

In his homily, Francis called on young people to “believe in a new humanity” that rejects hatred between different peoples and does not misuse national borders as barriers.

“For many people, that is more convenient than having young people who are alert and searching, trying to respond to God’s dream and to all the restlessness present in the human heart”.

The 28-year-old said he told them it was “important to be ourselves in these times, these crucial moments”.

Organizers of the Catholic jamboree known as World Youth Day estimated 1.5 million youths attended his Mass at a meadow near Krakow, many of them having camped out in sleeping bags from a vigil service of prayer, singing and dance performances the previous evening.

Pope Francis has announced that the next World Youth Day will take place in Panama in 2019.

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His appeal came at the end of World Youth Day, a weeklong event being held in southern Poland this year that draws young Catholics from around the world every two to three years for a spiritual pep rally.

Pope Francis looks on during a mass in the Campus Misericordiae in Brzegi near Krakow