GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) β Pope Francis has told hundreds of thousands of people at his first outdoor Mass in Ecuador that today’s families need miracles.
In his homily, Francis praised families as the bedrock of society where miracles are performed daily out of love, although he said women and the elderly sometimes wind up feeling abandoned and unloved.
Francis has asked the church’s bishops to study ways to provide better pastoral care to gays, the divorced and nontraditional families.
At Monday’s outdoor Mass in Guayaquil, Francis asked the faithful to pray for solutions so that, in his words: “Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, scandalous or threatening, and turn it … into a miracle.”
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, clarified that Francis was talking about helping people move from “a situation of sin to one of grace.”
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203-v-36-(Steve Coleman, AP religion editor)–Pope Francis has told hundreds of thousands of people at an outdoor Mass in Ecuador that today’s families need miracles. AP Religion Editor Steve Coleman reports. (6 Jul 2015)
< 205-c-13-(Nicole Winfield, AP correspondent)-“the church today”-AP correspondent Nicole Winfield reports that Pope Francis spoke about ministering to families at his first outdoor Mass in Ecuador. (6 Jul 2015) < 204-c-06-(Nicole Winfield, AP correspondent)-“Mass in Ecuador”-AP correspondent Nicole Winfield reports that Pope Francis has preached about the family in the first major event on his South American trip. (6 Jul 2015) <
