KRAKOW, Poland – Pope Francis is encouraging his churchmen to leave their comfort zones and tend to the needy on the peripheries.
He issued the call as he celebrated a mass yesterday in a shrine in Poland dedicated to the late Polish pope, St. John Paul II. During mass, the pope said that Jesus wanted his church “to be a church on the move, a church that goes out into the world.”
He delivered his words in a large modern church, the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II, in Krakow.
He said that Jesus’ call to his disciples to minister to the world is also relevant today to churchmen and women.
Francis said: “This call is also addressed to us. How can we fail to hear its echo in the great appeal of Saint John Paul II: ‘Open the doors’?”
Pope Francis has prayed at the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Lagiewniki as he begins a day of religious ceremonies during a visit to Poland.
Nuns and priests, singing and waving little banners, greeted the pope as he entered the church in the Krakow district.
He then prayed before the chapel of St. Faustina, a Polish mystic who was canonized under Pope John Paul II, himself now also a saint.