Pope Francis asked this Saturday have “closeness” to the poor and not “charity”, by distinguishing three people who work with the most needy in the main activity of his 86th birthday.
“Charity is good, but it is pagan. Christian is closeness, charity with prayer. And that is good,” the Pope said this Saturday when he gave the Mother Teresa award to three people who live charity towards “the poorest of the poor.”
The three honored by the Pope on his 86th birthday were the Syrian Franciscan priest Hanna Jallouf, the representative of the homeless Gian Piero “Wué” and the Italian industrialist Silvano Pedrollo, to whom he presented a small sculpture intended as a sign of gratitude to those who care for the poorest.
With normal agenda, during the morning of this Saturday the Pope He also received Cardinals Marc Ouellet and Marcello Semeraro, Italian Bishop Fabio Dal Cin, Slovenian President Robert Golob and seminarians from the Diocese of Rome.
Around noon, Jorge Bergoglio closed his official agenda with an audience to the participants of the Christmas Concert organized this year by the Vatican.
Bergoglio turns 86 months before the tenth anniversary of his election as the 266th Pope of the Church on March 13, 2023the first Latin American.
For next month, The Pontiff has a six-day trip to Africa on the agenda, for which he will visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
One of the first leaders to greet him It was Italian President Sergio Matarella, who through an official note sent him the “most sincere and cordial wishes of personal well-being and long and profitable continuity of his high teaching.”
Complaints against politicians
Pope Francis also lamented that “sometimes” there are politicians who “use” it and criticized that his words are taken out of context for certain purposes.
“Yes, sometimes they use me. But we use God much more, so keep quiet and go ahead,” admitted the pontiff in statements to the Spanish newspaper ABC.
The Pope also recalled that some time ago a photo of him was manipulated by a leader he did not identify.
“Six or seven years ago an Argentine candidate came to mass. They took a photo outside the sacristy and I told him: Please, don’t use it politically. Stay calm, he replied. Within a week, Buenos Aires was covered with that photo, faked to make it look like it had been a personal audience.”Francisco explained.
In that framework, Francisco denounced the manipulation of his wordswhich are taken out of context to convey different messages to those he wants to give.
“Sometimes they do from a hermeneutics prior to what I said, to take me where they want. ‘The Pope said this’… Yes, but I said it in a context. If you take it out of context it’s something else,” he emphasized.
Jorge Bergoglio, elected the 266th Pope of the Church on March 13, 2013, turns 86 today while recovering from a knee ailment that has afflicted him since the beginning of the year and for which he underwent various therapies.
“I’m already walking the decision not to have surgery turned out to be a good one,” raised in that direction on the evolution of the lesion.
Furthermore, he added that “rules with the head, not with the knee”, by ruling that he continues with his pontificate.
