Pope: not right to talk about a ‘violent, terrorist’ Islam

Francis was responding to a question about the killing on July 26 of an 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest by knife-wielding attackers who burst into a church service in western France, forced the priest to his knees and slit his throat.

In a message to the world’s young, he said it was up to them to fight xenophobia and “teach us how to live in diversity, in dialogue, to experience multiculturalism not as a threat, but an opportunity”.

“I think that in almost all religions there is always a small fundamentalist group”, he said, admitting that even Catholicism has them.

Vatican officials said Francis, 79, was uninjured.

“I know it unsafe to say this but terrorism grows when there is no other option and when money is made a god and it, instead of the person, is put at the centre of the world economy”, he said.

As hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive in smugglers’ boats on Europe’s southern chores, some nations on the continent, notably in central and eastern Europe, have thrown up fences to keep the refugees out. Poland has been among the European Union countries that have refused to take in many Muslim refugees, saying it has already welcomed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian immigrants.

Since the Paris extremist attacks in early 2015, concerns have heightened that the Vatican, and the pope in particular, could be targeted because of his role as the most influential Christian leader.

Pope Francis has explained why he took a tumble last week during a public Mass outdoors in public while on a pilgrimage.

This pilgrimage marked the first time the native Argentine pope sent foot in Eastern Europe.

Reporters aboard the papal plane flying him back to Rome after the five-day trip to Poland asked him Sunday night how come he fell while sprinkling incense around the outdoor altar at the Jasna Gora monastery, in Czestochowa, before a huge crowd at Poland’s most popular Catholic shrine. He apparently was referring to Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland that triggered World War II.

That was his message to young people during Saturday’s prayer vigil at the 31st World Youth Day being held in this Polish city and attended by some 1.6 million young people, according to the organisers.