Pope Francis has once again taken a moment to greet a man with facial disfigurement in St. Peter’s Square prior to this Wednesday’s general audience.
He looked straight ahead, talked to him for several seconds, and hugged him. The cameras recorded this dramatic moment, and pictures of the encounter have gone around the world, as happened a few days ago when the Pope greeted Vinicio, a man plagued by skin tumors.
Since becoming Pope, Francis has struck the world by his proximity – even in a physical sense – to people of all kinds. He has embraced the sick, the possessed, Heads of State, children, the elderly…
With these gestures he has shown that, like St. Francis of Assisi, he does not distance himself from the wounds of Christ, but rather draws near to them in the form of human suffering – from that of more obvious physical sort to those of a hidden, moral nature.
And today we celebrate...