He also highlighted some of the reasons why he chose the name Francis, including his love and care for the poor, work that he noted Christians are engaged in throughout the world.
“But there is another form of poverty!” he told the diplomats.
“It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously.
“It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the ‘tyranny of relativism,’ which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples,” he said.
The second reason that he chose Francis, the Pope recalled, is that the saint worked to build peace.
“But there is no true peace without truth!” he stressed.
“There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.”
Pope Francis noted that one of his titles is “pontiff, that is, a builder of bridges with God and between people.”
