At the Angelus, on Sunday, November 4, Francis prays for the pilgrims massacred by the jihadists while they were heading by bus to a monastery. In the catechesis, “The hungry need not only a plate of soup, but also a smile and listening”.

It is a deep "pain" that Pope Francis expresses, during this Sunday's Angelus in St. Peter's Square, for the terrorist attack that two days ago struck the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, where, in the region of Minya, a group of pilgrims were attacked by a commando of jihadists from the Isis while heading by bus to a monastery. Eleven people died, most of them belonging to a single family, and many were injured. "I pray for the victims, pilgrims killed for the mere fact of being Christians, and I ask Mary Most Holy to console the families and the entire community," Francis says from the window of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, followed by a moment of silence interrupted by the request to pray a Hail Mary to Our Lady all together.

In his catechesis before the Marian prayer, Francis reflects on the commandment of love, "You will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbour as yourself” at the centre of Mark's Gospel today. Through it, he explains, "Jesus taught once and for all that love for God and love for one's neighbor are inseparable; indeed, more than that, they support one another. Even if placed in sequence, they are the two faces of a single medal: lived together they are the true strength of the believer!

"To love God - explains the Pontiff - is to live by Him and for Him, for what He is and for what He does. It means, the Pope continued, “to invest one's energies every day to be his collaborators in serving our neighbour without reserve, in trying to forgive without limits and in cultivating relationships of communion and fraternity”.

But who is this neighbor? The answer is simple: "It is the person I meet in the journey" of my life. "It is not about pre-selecting my neighbor, this is not a Christian... I think my neighbor is the one I pre-selected. No, this is not Christian, it's pagan!", the Pope stresses off the cuff. Instead, it's a matter of "having eyes to see them and heart to want their good", the Pope emphasizes. "If we practice seeing with the gaze of Jesus, we will always listen and be close to those in need".

And "the needs of one's neighbor certainly require effective answers", but before that "they ask for sharing". Pope Bergoglio uses an image to explain this assumption: "We can say that the hungry need not only a plate of soup, but also a smile, to be heard and also a prayer, perhaps made together".

Today's invitation is then "to be projected not only towards the urgencies of the poorest brothers and sisters, but above all to be attentive to their need for fraternal closeness, sense of life and tenderness. This - Francis points out - challenges our Christian communities: it is a matter of avoiding the risk of being communities that live on many initiatives but with few relationships. The risk of communities? To become "service stations" but with little company, in the full and Christian sense of this term".

“God, who is love, created us out of love, so that we can love others while remaining united to Him. The two dimensions of love, for God and for our neighbour, in their unity, characterize the disciple of Christ.”

After the Angelus, the Pope recalls the beatification that took place yesterday in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, in Rome, of Mother Clelia Merloni, founder of the Apostolic Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. "A woman - she says - fully abandoned to the will of God, zealous in charity, patient in adversity and heroic in forgiveness. Let us praise to God for the luminous evangelical witness of the new Blessed and follow her example of goodness and mercy. Let's all applaud the new Blessed!

During the greetings, the Pontiff's thoughts turn to all the 20,000 pilgrims present, from Rome, Italy and abroad, gathered in the square despite the heavy rain; in particular, Pope Francis greets a group of students from Vienna, the young people of the "Opera Giorgio La Pira" in Florence, and the young families of Raldon, in the province of Verona. Finally he says goodbye with his usual: "I wish you all a happy Sunday. Please don't forget to pray for me. Have a good lunch and goodbye!".