The fourteen migrants were guests of Caritas of Florence and the European university, and carried banners of the charity that is caring for them along with Vatican flags. As we know, lepers were considered unclean and bound by law to avoid contact with others.
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In his main talk, the pope discussed the Gospel story of the leper who begged Jesus to heal him, saying: “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean”.
As Jesus reached out and touched the unclean man, he said, so we must never be afraid to reach out and touch the poor and those most in need. “And we forget that he is the body of Christ!”
Taking up again the theme of mercy during this week’s audience, Francis cited the evangelist St. Luke’s account of Jesus healing a faith-filled leper guided his catechesis. “This faith is the strength that allowed him to break every convention and try to meet with Jesus and, kneeling before him, call him ‘Lord'”.
“A Christian excludes no one, makes room for everyone, lets everybody come”, he said.
Connecting with Armenia’s traditional attachment to the story of Noah’s Ark, which according to legend came to rest on Mount Ararat, which is now in neighboring Turkey, Pope Francis told the people that they should be like Noah, “who after the flood never exhausted of looking toward the heavens and kept releasing doves”. Recently, the Vatican brought a second group to Rome from the Moria Refugee Camp based on the island of Lesbos.
After the leper’s healing, Jesus’ instruction to “show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed” highlights the importance of bringing those excluded back “into the community of believers and social life”, he said.
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Joined closely by just over a dozen refugees at his weekly public audience, Pope Francis said that in following Jesus’ example, the Christian excludes no one.
