Pope Francis urged ethnic Hungarians and Romanians to put their troubled past behind them on Saturday as bad weather disrupted his visit to Transylvania, forcing him to be driven for hours on winding mountain roads.

More than 80,000 people gathered on muddy slopes around one of Romania’s most popular Catholic shrines to see the pope on the second day of his trip to the country.

Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War, has a large ethnic Hungarian population and there have been tensions sometimes between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians.

Ethnic Hungarians, many of whom are Catholic in a predominantly Orthodox Christian nation, are the largest minority in Romania, around six per cent of the population.

This has often caused friction between the two European Union neighbours with tensions flaring occasionally over the public use of ethnic minority flags.

In his homily to the rain-soaked crowd, which included Hungarian President Janos Ader, the pope suggested past troubles should not be a barrier to co-existence.

“Complicated and sorrow-filled situations from the past must not be forgotten or denied, yet neither must they be an obstacle or an excuse standing in the way of our desire to live together as brothers and sisters,” he said.

In his homily, Francis said God wanted “that we not let ourselves be robbed of our fraternal love by those voices and hurts that provoke division and

 fragmentation.”

Francis was to have flown by plane from Bucharest to the city of Bacau and then by helicopter to the Sumuleu-Ciuc shrine in this town nestled in the mountains.

But thunderstorms, low clouds and rain forced him to fly to the city of Targu Mures, on the other side of the Carpathian mountains, and be driven for to the site.

From there, Francis was due to continue by helicopter to the city of Iasi to visit Catholics in the remote region of Moldova, close to the border with the former Soviet Union’s satellite Republic of Moldova.

But Vatican officials said he would drive back to Targu Mures and fly by plane to Iasi before returning to Bucharest.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has visited Transylvania many times privately to meet local Hungarian leaders and outline his policy views.

In 2015, Romania rebuked him for posting on his Facebook page symbols it said suggested Budapest favours autonomy for Romanian territory populated mainly by ethnic Hungarians, calling such “revisionism” unacceptable. </s> MIERCUREA-CIUC, Romania (Reuters) - Pope Francis urged ethnic Hungarians and Romanians to put their troubled past behind them on Saturday as bad weather disrupted his visit to Transylvania, forcing him to be driven for hours on winding mountain roads.

More than 80,000 people gathered on muddy slopes around one of Romania’s most popular Catholic shrines to see the pope on the second day of his trip to the country.

Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War, has a large ethnic Hungarian population and there have been tensions sometimes between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians.

Ethnic Hungarians, many of whom are Catholic in a predominantly Orthodox Christian nation, are the largest minority in Romania, around six percent of the population.

This has often caused friction between the two European Union neighbors with tensions flaring occasionally over the public use of ethnic minority flags.

In his homily to the rain-soaked crowd, which included Hungarian President Janos Ader, the pope suggested past troubles should not be a barrier to co-existence.

“Complicated and sorrow-filled situations from the past must not be forgotten or denied, yet neither must they be an obstacle

or an excuse standing in the way of our desire to live together as brothers and sisters,” he said.

Francis was to have flown by plane from Bucharest to the city of Bacau and then by helicopter to the Sumuleu-Ciuc shrine in this town nestled in the mountains.

But thunderstorms, low clouds and rain forced him to fly to the city of Targu Mures, on the other side of the Carpathian mountains, and be driven for to the site.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has visited Transylvania many times privately to meet local Hungarian leaders and outline his policy views.

In 2015, Romania rebuked him for posting on his Facebook page symbols it said suggested Budapest favors autonomy for Romanian territory populated mainly by ethnic Hungarians, calling such “revisionism” unacceptable.

Slideshow (12 Images)

After the weather improved somewhat, Francis flew by helicopter and plane to the city of Iasi to visit Catholics in the remote region of Moldova, close to the border with the former Soviet Union’s satellite Republic of Moldova.

There he addressed tens of thousands of young people, telling them to remain united and look for fresh bonds that can unite people.

He returns to Rome on Sunday night. </s> Pope Francis urged ethnic Hungarians and Romanians to put their troubled past behind them on Saturday as bad weather disrupted his visit to Transylvania, forcing him to be driven for hours on winding mountain roads. </s> BUCHAREST, Romania — Pope Francis, on the last day of his trip to Romania, on Sunday asked for forgiveness on behalf of his church for the suffering endured by the Roma people, saying his heart was “weighed down by the many experiences of discrimination, segregation and mistreatment” they have experienced.

The pope offered the apology at a newly consecrated church in a poor neighborhood of Blaj, a city in Transylvania, where a priest of Roma ethnicity welcomed him “to the periphery of the peripheries.”

“History tells us that Christians too, including Catholics, are not strangers to such evil,” Francis said. “I would like to ask your forgiveness for this. I ask forgiveness — in the name of the church and of the Lord — and I ask forgiveness of you, for all those times in history when we have discriminated, mistreated or looked askance at you.”

This was his first trip to Romania — and the first by a pontiff since John Paul II visited 20 years ago — and Francis sought to mend relations between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. He also took the opportunity to advocate for millions of Romanian emigrants, to hearten the country’s small Catholic population and to again position himself as a counterbalance to the tip toward nationalism around the world. </s> VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - The Latest on Pope Francis' visit to the Baltic countries (all times local):

Pope Francis is urging Lithuania, which endured decades of Soviet and Nazi occupation, expulsions and executions, to be a model of solidarity in a world riven by intolerance as he began a visit to three Baltic nations.

Francis arrived in Lithuania on Saturday to encourage the faith and mark the 100th anniversary of Baltic independence, kicking off a grueling, four-day trip that will also take him to Latvia and Estonia.

Speaking outside the presidential palace in the capital Vilnius, Francis recalled that until the arrival of "totalitarian ideologies" in the 20th century, Lithuania had been a peaceful home to a variety of ethnic and religious groups.

He said the world today is marked by political forces that exploit fear and conflict to justify violence and expulsions of others - a reference to anti-immigrant populist and far-right groups in Europe and beyond.

Pope Francis has departed on a pilgrimage to all three Baltic countries.

Francis left Rome early Saturday morning on a special Alitalia flight headed to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

His four-day trip will also include Latvia and Estonia.

Francis greeted the Airbus A320's captain and two of its flight attendants at the top of the stairs to the aircraft before taking his seat inside.

Russia will be the elephant in the room as Pope Francis begins a four-day visit to the Baltics amid renewed alarm about Moscow's intentions in the region it has twice occupied.

Francis is travelling to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to mark the 100th anniversaries of their independence and to encourage the faith in the nations, which saw five decades of Soviet-imposed religious repression and state-sponsored atheism.

"Fifty years of occupation left their mark both on the church and on the people," said Monsignor Gintaras Grusas, archbishop of Vilnius. "People have deep wounds from that period that take time to heal."

Francis lands Saturday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to begin four-day, three-country trip that will feature encounters with political leaders as well as the Catholic, Lutheran and Russian Orthodox faithful. </s> BOGOTA, Colombia (CNS) — Pope Francis urged Colombians to put aside prejudice and pursue peace through social inclusion, fighting inequality and paying attention to the plight of the country’s most marginalized populations, such as campesinos, Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples.

Speaking alongside President Juan Manuel Santos, the pope called on Colombians to recognize that “real wealth is diversity” and to pursue a “culture of encounter,” in which people are at the center of all political, social and economic activity. Promoting such a culture would “help us flee from the temptation of revenge and the satisfaction of short-term partisan interests.”

“I encourage you to look to all those who today are excluded and marginalized by society, those who have no value in the eyes of the majority, who are held back, cast aside. Everyone is needed in the work of creating and shaping society. This is not achieved simply with those of ‘pure blood,’ but by all,” the pope told Santos and government officials Sept. 7 outside the Casa de Narino, Colombia’s presidential palace.

“Please . . . listen to the poor, to those who suffer,” he added. “Look them in the eye and let yourselves be continually questioned by their faces racked with pain and by their pleading hands. From them we learn true lessons about life, humanity and dignity.”

The speech — invoking St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit who fought discrimination and the slave trade in Colombia — was Pope Francis’ first official event on his five-day visit to the South American country.

Pope Francis arrived in Colombia as the country pursues peace after five decades of armed conflict. That conflict has claimed 220,000 lives and left millions more victimized and displaced. Many of those victims came from the poorest strata of Colombian society.

“Our gaze fixes upon the weakest, the oppressed and maltreated, those who have no voice, either because it has been taken from them, or was never given to them, or because they are ignored,” the pope said, as children sat behind on a platform in front of the presidential palace columns.

The pope also emphasized the importance of family — “envisioned by God to be the fruit of spousal love” — as a source of social cohesion and “that place where we learn to live with others despite our difference and to belong to one another.”

Colombia’s government and a Marxist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, reached a peace accord last year. The FARC is demobilizing and recently formed a political party. Another Marxist group, the National Liberation Army, is in talks with the government and agreed to a four-month cease-fire in the days before the pope’s arrival.

The peace accord with the FARC has proved polemic; some in Colombia disapprove of FARC leaders receiving reduced punishments for committing atrocities and fear the presence of former guerrillas in the country’s political process.

Pope Francis has not specifically endorsed the peace accord, but he saluted the process of bringing peace to Colombia.

“Over the past year, significant progress has been made. The steps taken give rise to hope, in the conviction that seeking peace is an open-ended endeavor, a task which does not relent, which demands the commitment of everyone,” Pope Francis said. “It is an endeavor challenging us not to weaken our efforts to build the unity of the nation.”

Santos, who has promoted the peace accord in the face of stiff opposition, called the pope’s visit a “push” to take the first steps toward peace and reconciliation.

“It’s no use silencing our weapons if we continue armed in our hearts,” the president said. “It’s no use ending a war if we still pursue each other as enemies. That’s why were need to reconcile.

“We trust your visit will open the hearts and minds of Colombians to the peace that comes from God and inhabits the souls of men. This is the peace we are constructing,” he told the pope.

Pope Francis ended by telling the country, “you have a great and noble mission, which is also a difficult task,” then quoting Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “In spite of this, before oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the unending wars down the centuries, have been able to subdue the tenacious advantage of life over death. An advantage which is both increasing and accelerating.” </s> BOGOTA, Colombia (CNS) — Pope Francis urged Colombians to put aside prejudice and pursue peace through social inclusion, fighting inequality and paying attention to the plight of the country’s most marginalized populations, such as campesinos, Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples.

Speaking alongside President Juan Manuel Santos, the pope called on Colombians to recognize that “real wealth is diversity” and to pursue a “culture of encounter,” in which people are at the center of all political, social and economic activity. Promoting such a culture would “help us flee from the temptation of revenge and the satisfaction of short-term partisan interests.”

“I encourage you to look to all those who today are excluded and marginalized by society, those who have no value in the eyes of the majority, who are held back, cast aside. Everyone is needed in the work of creating and shaping society. This is not achieved simply with those of ‘pure blood,’ but by all,” the pope told Santos and government officials Sept. 7 outside the Casa de Narino, Colombia’s presidential palace.

“Please … listen to the poor, to those who suffer,” he added. “Look them in the eye and let yourselves be continually questioned by their faces racked with pain and by their pleading hands. From them we learn true lessons about life, humanity and dignity.”

The speech — invoking St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit who fought discrimination and the slave trade in Colombia — was Pope Francis’ first official event on his five-day visit to the South American country.

Pope Francis arrived in Colombia as the country pursues peace after five decades of armed conflict. That conflict has claimed 220,000 lives and left millions more victimized and displaced. Many of those victims came from the poorest strata of Colombian society.

“Our gaze fixes upon the weakest, the oppressed and maltreated, those who have no voice, either because it has been taken from them, or was never given to them, or because they are ignored,” the pope said, as children sat behind on a platform in front of the presidential palace columns.

The pope also emphasized the importance of family — “envisioned by God to be the fruit of spousal love” — as a source of social cohesion and “that place where we learn to live with others despite our difference and to belong to one another.”

Colombia’s government and a Marxist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, reached a peace accord last year. The FARC is demobilizing and recently formed a political party. Another Marxist group, the National Liberation Army, is in talks with the government and agreed to a four-month cease-fire in the days before the pope’s arrival.

The peace accord with the FARC has proved polemic; some in Colombia disapprove of FARC leaders receiving reduced punishments for committing atrocities and fear the presence of former guerrillas in the country’s political process.

Pope Francis has not specifically endorsed the peace accord, but he saluted the process of bringing peace to Colombia.

“Over the past year, significant progress has been made. The steps taken give rise to hope, in the conviction that seeking peace is an open-ended endeavor, a task which does not relent, which demands the commitment of everyone,” Pope Francis said. “It is an endeavor challenging us not to weaken our efforts to build the unity of the nation.”

Santos, who has promoted the peace accord in the face of stiff opposition, called the pope’s visit a “push” to take the first steps toward peace and reconciliation.

“It’s no use silencing our weapons if we continue armed in our hearts,” the president said. “It’s no use ending a war if we still pursue each other as enemies. That’s why were need to reconcile.

“We trust your visit will open the hearts and minds of Colombians to the peace that comes from God and inhabits the souls of men. This is the peace we are constructing,” he told the pope.

Pope Francis ended by telling the country, “you have a great and noble mission, which is also a difficult task,” then quoting Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “In spite of this, before oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the unending wars down the centuries, have been able to subdue the tenacious advantage of life over death. An advantage which is both increasing and accelerating.” </s> SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — Pope Francis made the first-ever papal visit to North Macedonia on Tuesday and sought to encourage its efforts to integrate into European institutions after its name change resolved a decades-long dispute with Greece.

In a meeting with government authorities, Francis praised North Macedonia’s multi-ethnic and multi-faith culture and said its example of being a bridge between East and West showed that peaceful coexistence can exist in a country rich with diversity.

“These particular features are also highly significant for increased integration with the nations of Europe,” he said. “It is my hope that this integration will develop in a way that is beneficial for the entire region of the Western Balkans, with unfailing respect for diversity and for fundamental rights.”

North Macedonia’s previous constitutional name was the Republic of Macedonia. It officially changed its name to North Macedonia in February as part of an agreement to end an almost three-decade long dispute with Greece, which blocked the former Yugoslav republic’s path to membership in NATO and the EU over rights to the Macedonia name.

After landing at Skopje’s airport, Francis went by car — a typically small Volkswagen Jetta — for talks with outgoing President Gjore Ivanov. His 10-hour visit also included a prayer at the memorial of North Macedonia’s most famous native daughter, Mother Teresa, as well as a Mass for the tiny Catholic community in the country of 2.1 million.

Francis was surrounded by Mother Teresa’s sari-clad Sisters of Charity nuns in praying before the memorial, a giant statue of the tiny nun, located outside the remains of the church where Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was baptized in 1910.

In his homily at Mass, Francis praised Mother Teresa’s dedication to the poor, saying it quenched her hunger for God.

“She went to the Lord exactly as she went to the despised, the unloved, the lonely and the forgotten,” Francis said to a crowd in a central Skopje square that organizers estimated at 15,000 gathered.

Viktor Dimovski, North Macedonia’s foreign ministry state secretary, told reporters Monday that Francis’ visit was historic and comes at a crucial moment as North Macedonia seeks entry into the European Union and NATO.

“The pope’s visit strengthens further internal cohesion and unity, and brings messages of reconciliation and solidarity,” he said.

The country has been an EU candidate since 2005, but is still waiting for the start of membership talks with the bloc. With the name dispute now resolved, North Macedonia hopes to get a clear signal for the start of accession talks in June. It expects to become the 30th NATO member at the end of this year.

But the country is deeply polarized between the governing Social Democrats, who support the name deal, and the opposition VMRO-DPMNE conservatives, fierce opponents of the name change.

Ivanov, the outgoing president, referred to the divisions in his speech to the pope, urging Macedonians to use the visit as an opportunity to heal after being “heavily wounded by broken promises, unfulfilled expectations and faltering trust in the international community.”

“Only spiritually transformed people can transform the spirit of society,” Ivanov said.

Pro-EU President Stevo Pendarovski, who was elected president in a runoff election last weekend, said he saw his victory as a “ticket for NATO and EU.”

While the visit was a political boost for North Macedonia, it was also a spiritual boost for Catholics from across the region and ethnic spectrum.

“It is magnificent that we came to see the pope here in Macedonia because he has a message for the youth and whole humanity, and we need to apply it in our lives,” said Kristiana Mjeshtri, a Catholic from Albania.

Ivan Giljanovic traveled from Split, Croatia. “I am a Catholic and it means a lot for me,” he said. “Everything is about faith.”

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area. </s> VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday offered a Christmas hope for peace in a world lacerated by war and terrorism, urging people to remember migrants, refugees and those hit by economic instability caused by “idolatry of money.”

Francis, marking the fourth Christmas season since his election in 2013, also urged Palestinians and Israelis, facing renewed tension after a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements on occupied land, to have the courage to put aside hate and revenge and “write a new page of history.”

His traditional “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message was linked by a common thread of war, violence and suffering at a time that should be defined by harmony and peace symbolized by the infant Jesus.

“Peace to those who have lost a person dear to them as a result of brutal acts of terrorism, which have sown fear and death into the hearts of so many countries and cities,” he told some 40,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

Security was heightened for the Christmas weekend in Italy and at the Vatican after Italian police killed the man believed to be responsible for the Berlin market truck attack while other European cities kept forces on high alert.

“Today this message [of peace] goes out to the ends of the earth to reach all peoples, especially those scarred by war and harsh conflicts that seem stronger than the yearning for peace,” he said, speaking in Italian from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

He called for peace in Syria, urging immediate assistance to the exhausted population of the city of Aleppo, which Syrian government forces recaptured last week after four years of devastating fighting with rebels.

“It is time for weapons to be still forever [in Syria], and the international community to actively seek a negotiated solution, so that civil co-existence can be restored in the country,” he said.

Francis, the first Latin American pope, also said Christmas should inspire everyone to help the less fortunate, including migrants, refugees and those swept up by social and economic upheavals.

“Peace to the peoples who suffer because of the economic ambitions of the few, because of the sheer greed and the idolatry of money, which leads to slavery,” he said.

At his Christmas Eve Mass on Saturday, Francis said the feast had been “taken hostage” by dazzling materialism that puts God in the shadows.

On Sunday, he also called for an end to “fundamentalist terrorism” in Nigeria, a reference to Boko Haram, which has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during a seven-year insurgency to create an Islamic state.

Francis further appealed for an end to tensions between the government and opposition in Venezuela, for harmony in Colombia, which recently ended a civil war with FARC guerrillas, and an end to strife on the Korean peninsula and in Myanmar.
Pope Francis urges ethnic Hungarians and Romanians to mend their differences toward a peaceful existence in one country.