Al Arabiya
The Associated Press
Pope Francis focused his one-day visit last week to the wealthy northern Italian city of Milan on those marginalized by society, visiting families in a housing project and exhorting clergy and nuns gathered in a cathedral to minister to the peripheries.
During his visit to the housing project, the pope made private visits to three families: one couple in their 50s struggling with infirmity, members of a family in their 80s dealing with illness and a third family originally from Morocco that is engaged in teaching Arabic.
Mihoual Abdel Karim and his family warmly welcome the Pope into their home, offering him traditional sweets, taking a selfie with him and giving him gifts.
On 28-29 April, the Pope will be visiting Egypt, and he has also received an invitation to visit Lebanon.
The housing project on the edge of Italy’s wealthy finance and fashion capital is home to more than 1,000 people, including many elderly and foreigners living on the margins of society.
The papal itinerary, which also included a stop at the city’s main prison, underscored Francis’ view that the peripheries offer a better view of reality than the well-tended and prosperous city centres.
The visit to the world’s largest diocese, with more than five million faithful, and the home of his main competition in 2013 for the papacy, Cardinal Angelo Scola, marked a resumption of the pope’s regular pastoral visits after a yearlong hiatus because of the Jubilee Year of Mercy commitments in Rome.
Last Update: Thursday, 30 March 2017 KSA 16:56 – GMT 13:56
