The persecution of Christians. This is what Pope Francis addressed as he met with 5,000 consecrated men and women from the Middle East who visited the Vatican.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
POPE FRANCIS The Pope highlighted that more Christians are persecuted now, that in the early years of Christianity. He then shared a personal anecdote involving a priest from Iraq.\u00a0 \t <\/p>\n POPE FRANCIS \u00a0 After addressing the crowds, Pope Francis then took a few questions from the consecrated men and women.\u00a0 \t <\/p>\n He called on them to avoid gossip for it only leads to division. He also reminded them that their lives should not be based on a set of rules that drown their creativity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September 17, 2015. The Pope met with more than 5,000 consecrated men and women from 125 countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":32957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"acf":{"video":"http:\/\/youtu.be\/NPXIZsH3KSs","video_descarga":"http:\/\/attuale.romereports.com\/news\/","international_url":"http:\/\/romereports.com.edgesuite.net\/news\/bconsacratiint.mov","type":"bn","newsletter":"si"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong> 'I know that there are consecrated men and women from Iraq and Syria here. I want to begin by taking a moment for the martyrs of Iraq and Syria, who are our modern day martyrs. Maybe you personally knew some or many of them.'\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong> 'A few days ago, in St. Peter's Square, an Iraqi priest came up to me and gave me small crucifix. It was the same crucifix that a martyred priest held, when his throat was slit \u00a0for not denying Christ. I carry that crucifix right here.' \t <\/em><\/p>\n