Pope Francis: Show Mercy, Don’t Rush to Condemn

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis, speaking to an overflow crowd of more than 150,000 in St Peter’s Square, urged the world on Sunday to be more forgiving and merciful and not so quick to condemn other people’s failures.

“A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just,” he told the cheering crowd from the window of the papal apartments overlooking the square.

Four days after his election, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina spoke both as pope and as parish priest -earlier he said Mass for a few hundred Vatican workers in a tiny church just inside the city-state’s walls.

Chants of “Francesco, Francesco, Francesco,” the pope’s name in Italian, reverberated through the square and down a long boulevard leading to the Tiber River.

Since his election on Wednesday as the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years, Francis has signaled a sharp change of style from his more aloof predecessor, Benedict, and laid out a clear moral path for the 1.2-billion-member Church, which is beset by scandals, intrigue and strife.  Read More