Papal audiences on Wednesdays are usually an opportunity for ordinary people to have access to the Pope Franciscoand this week was no exception: a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics He posed for photos with the pontiff and was handed a letter by sexual abuse survivors who came by bicycle from Germany demanding a better response from the Church to the crisis.
In the midst of all this, Francis halted the action in St. Peter’s Square to receive a call on a cell phone. The Vatican gave no information about the content of the call.
Something similar had happened last year. Francis interrupted a general audience when an aide handed him a mobile phone and took an urgent call from a senior Vatican official.
He often patiently allows people to take selfies with him, but he has also regularly warned people that don’t become a slave to mobile phones and other forms of technology.
“You must free yourself from mobile phone addiction,” he told youth in 2019. “When you become a slave to your mobile phone, you lose your freedom”.
On other occasions, he has said that it is sad that people use their mobile phones at the table or while attending mass.
Members of Mosaicoan LGBTQ+ group, said they came to deliver a message of inclusion and unity to the pontiff on the international day against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.
“What we have come to ask of Pope Francis is that the Church finally, let’s say, welcome us”, he stated Tiziano Fani Braga, the coordinator of the group, after the hearing. “We try to be an integral part of the Church, like all believers, without discrimination and to fight against all types of discrimination.”
Also in the square were 15 survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their companions, who left Munich on May 6 on a bicycle pilgrimage to Rome. They sought to draw attention to the way the Catholic Church deals with priests who rape and sexually abuse children and vulnerable adults, and the way it treats the victims.
The group sent a letter to Francis urging him to “do everything in his power to ensure that in all sectors of the Universal Church the issue of sexual and spiritual abuse is seen, confronted and prevented through appropriate preventive measures.
The letter acknowledges that some initial steps have been taken, but stresses that more needs to be done and that it should send “a clear signal to the perpetrators and bishops who failed to live up to their responsibilities and who, to some extent, still have not today.” made”.
Francis’ weekly catechism lesson focused on the life and vocation of St. Francis Xavier, and concluded with another call for peace in Ukraine.
(With information from AP and Reuters)
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Source-www.infobae.com