Pope Francis made jokes on Monday and took a kind walk to greet those he wished as he opened his first full day in Slovakia in good health and spirits before a solemn meeting with the country’s Jewish community.
Francis arrived at the presidential palace and later at the capital’s St. Martin’s Cathedral, with a look of rest and energy on the second day of his four-day pilgrimage to Hungary and Slovakia, marking his first international outing. since he underwent bowel surgery in July.
“That I’m still alive!” Francis made fun of him when an Italian journalist asked him how he felt as he climbed a ramp to the cathedral for a meeting with Slovak priests and nuns, where he broke a series of jokes in a sign of good humor.
Pope Francis, flanked by Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, on the right, is attending a welcoming ceremony on Monday at the presidential palace in Bratislava, Slovakia.
(AP)
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Francis, 84, has recovered after removing 13 inches from his colon so the Vatican said it was a narrow narrowing of his large intestine. He seemed in good shape, although he used a golf cart on Sunday for a few rigorous hours in Budapest to limit a long walk and has been giving some sitting speeches.
But he stayed for a long time to greet priests and bishops, almost all without masks, at the end of the meeting. And then he took a long walk through the cathedral square to greet the pilgrims, clearly enjoying the welcome and enthusiasm of the crowd after the coronavirus stopped their world travels for more than a year.
At his first stop of the day at the presidential palace in Bratislava, Francis told President Zuzana Caputova, Slovakia’s first woman president, that the coronavirus pandemic had been the biggest test in recent history, but that it should to offer a lesson for the future.
“It has taught us how easy it is, even when we are on the same boat, to retire and think only of ourselves. Instead, we realize again that we are all fragile and need others.”
Faced with a rigorous two-day savings in Slovakia, Francis spends Monday in Bratislava, where the highlight of his visit is an afternoon meeting at the Holocaust memorial in the capital, built on the site of a synagogue. destroyed by the communist regime in the 1960s.
Pope Francis blesses an unidentified man as he greets the crowd on Monday as he leaves Saint Martin’s Cathedral in Bratislava, Slovakia. (AP)
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He took part in the event on Sunday for Christians and Jews to work together to stop the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, saying it is a “fuse that should not be allowed to burn”.
Slovakia declared its independence from Czechoslovakia on March 14, 1939 and became a Nazi puppet state, with the country’s politician and Catholic priest Jozef Tiso becoming president.
Under his rule, the country adopted strict anti-Jewish laws and deported some 75,000 Jews to Nazi death camps where about 68,000 died. Tiso was sentenced to death and hanged in 1947.
Now, only about 5,000 Jews live in Slovakia, a 5.5 million largely Roman Catholic country currently ruled by a four-party center-right coalition government.
Last week, the government formally apologized for racial laws that deprived Jews in the country of their human and civil rights, prevented their access to education, and authorized the transfer of their property to non-Jewish owners. .
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the “Jewish Code” adopted on September 9, 1941, the government said in a statement on September 8 that “today it is a moral obligation to publicly express grief for the crimes committed by the past regime.” .
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The code was considered one of the harshest anti-Jewish laws adopted in Europe during the war.
Slovakia is now home to the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia, which has had members in the Slovak Parliament since 2016. The party openly defends the state’s legacy of Slovak Nazi puppets from World War II. Its members use Nazi greetings and want Slovakia to leave the European Union and NATO.