Pope Francis Keeps Busy Schedule Despite Feeling "not well"

In addition to the Conference of European Rabbis, he also met delegations from the Laudato Si’ Movement and an Italian charitable association, “Piccola Casa della Misericordia,” based in Gela, Sicily.

Francis’ morning also included a private audience with the Spanish politician Pere Aragonès, president of the government of Catalonia.

In the afternoon, Pope Francis is scheduled to meet with 7,000 children from over 80 countries. The pope announced the event after praying the midday Angelus on Oct. 1.

“It is an event to show the dream we all have: To go back to having the pure sentiments of children because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them,” he said.

The encounter, sponsored by the Dicastery for Culture and Education, is dedicated to the theme “Let us learn from boys and girls.”

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In the pope’s prepared remarks to the rabbis, he said his “first thought and prayer goes, above all else, to everything that has happened in the last few weeks.”

“Yet again violence and war have erupted in that Land blessed by the Most High, which seems continually assailed by the vileness of hatred and the deadly clash of weapons,” the speech continued. “The spread of anti-Semitic demonstrations, which I strongly condemn, is also of great concern.”

“In this time in which we are witnessing violence and destruction,” Francis’ prepared remarks said, “we believers are called to build fraternity and open paths of reconciliation for all and before all, in the name of the Almighty who, as another prophet says, has ‘plans for welfare and not for evil’ (Jer 29:11). Not weapons, not terrorism, not war, but compassion, justice, and dialogue are the fitting means for building peace.”

Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.