"Injustice is radicalized in the young," Pope Francis said. "They are cannon fodder, persecuted and threatened when they try to flee the spiral of violence and the hell of drugs."
Pope Francis met on Sunday with victims of church sex abuse, saying "God weeps" for their suffering and promising to hold all those responsible to account.
In a wide-ranging speech at the UN, Pope Francis touched on an array of hot-button topics, including the persecution of Christians, the Iran nuclear deal, drug trafficking -- "silently killing millions" -- and the rights of girls to an education.
On Friday, the head of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics will address the United Nations before leading an inter-faith service at the 9/11 Memorial and visiting a Catholic school in Harlem.
A day after meeting with President Barack Obama and enjoying a rapturous welcome from thousands of people on the streets of Washington, Francis became the first pontiff to address a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Pope Francis plunged into his first U.S. visit with gusto Wednesday, embracing the adulation of jubilant crowds across Washington even as he confronted controversy in remarks at the White House and a meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops.
Pope Francis arrived in the United States on Tuesday for his first visit -- a historic six-day trip to the spiritual home of capitalism after his tour of communist-ruled Cuba.
In the Catholic Church, Mass is always celebrated, never held or said. Francis, like other Catholic priests, delivers a homily, not a sermon. And a novitiate is a building or a program. A person entering the novitiate is a novice.
Pope Francis on Monday praised the sacrifices made by Cuba's Catholic Church to work on the island as he visited the home region of communist leaders Fidel and Raúl Castro.
HAVANA, Cuba – Pope Francis met Sunday with Fidel and Raúl Castro, the brothers who have ruled Cuba since its 1959 revolution, after celebrating an outdoor mass attended by hundreds of thousands.
