In the Mass he celebrated in Molfetta, Francis remembered the bishop who said: “‘Works of charity are not enough, if the charity of works is lacking. If the love from which the works leave is lacking, if the source is lacking, if the starting point that is the Eucharist is lacking, any pastoral commitment is only a stirring of things’.”

Christian communities will be able to complete the necessary red tape in four months. Egypt wants to improve the legal framework in which freedom of worship is exercised. The new step touches 102 churches and 64 places of prayer. Some 3,500 places of worship should follow.

Last Wednesday, 28 Catholic bishops held a prayer vigil in front of Delhi’s cathedral. In 2016, a sexual offence against a minor was committed every 15 minutes, and more than 100 women were raped every day. Caritas is providing sanitary napkins to counter school dropout.

Jarah Alhawamdeh lost his right leg to cancer at the age of 15, but this did not stop him from becoming a mountain climber, first the Kilimanjaro and now Mount Everest. His goal is to save the school in the Amman refugee camp where he grew up. "I do believe that we, as Palestinians, should show the world that we are educated, successful and that we deserve to have a good life as any human being,” he said.

Francis is in Alessano and Molfetta today 25 years after the death of the bishop who was also president of Pax Christi. "True wealth for him lay in understanding the poor. He was right, because the poor are really wealth of the Church. Remember it again, Don Tonino, faced with the recurrent temptation to follow the powerful, seek privileges, to settle for a comfortable life".

Some 84,583 soldiers and 20,000 civilian "village guards" will be deployed. The leader of the main, now disbanded opposition party calls on supporters to boycott the election. The United States and the European Union have withdrawn their financial support for the elections. Prime Minister Hun Sen, in power for 32 years, fears a "colour” revolution.