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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis presided over Saturday’s audience for the Jubilee Year of Mercy, during which he reflected on the redemption of mankind from the slavery of sin.

In his catechesis, delivered to the crowds in St Peter’s Square, the Pope called those who suffer to turn to the crucified Jesus.

He also reminded the faithful that God’s mercy is greater than our weaknesses and sins.

Please find the official English language synthesis of Pope Francis’ catechesis:

Dear Brothers and Sisters:  In our catechesis for this Holy Year of Mercy, we reflect today on the word “redemption”:  God has redeemed all humanity, liberating us by the precious blood of his Son Jesus (1 Pet 1:18-21).  How many ways we can be enslaved by false freedom; how much we need God to truly free us.  We are called to a new life, raised to the dignity of children of God.  Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, was sacrificed for us, that we might receive forgiveness, love and joy.  And so when we suffer and are put to the test, we are called to look intently upon the crucified Jesus:  it is he who suffers for us and in us, reveals God’s boundless love for us and never abandons us.  The Lord knows well our weaknesses and our sins: yet where our needs abound, his mercy abounds all the more and fills our hearts.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis warned against a “false freedom” which has created “many new forms of slavery” during his Jubilee Audience in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday.

The Holy Father’s catechesis focused on the word ‘redemption,’ which he said is “little used, but it is important because it points to the most radical liberation God is able to perform for us, for all humanity, and for the entirety of creation.”

“It appears that the people of today no longer love to think of being liberated and saved by the intervention of God; in fact, people today are under the illusion that their liberty is a force with which to obtain all things. They even boast of this,” – Pope Francis said – “But in reality, it is not like this. How many illusions are being sold under the pretext of freedom, and how many new forms of slavery are being created in our time in the name of a false freedom!”

“There are so many slaves: ‘I do this because I want to do it, I take drugs because I like it, I'm free, I will do something else.’  They are slaves!” – the Holy Father continued – “They become slaves in the name of freedom. We have all seen such people eventually end up in the ground. We need God to deliver us from all forms of indifference, selfishness and self-sufficiency.”

Pope Francis said we have been called instead to a new state of life.

“By becoming one of us, the Lord Jesus not only takes on our human condition, but he also raises us up to the possibility of being children of God,” – the Pope said – “By His death and resurrection, the unblemished lamb Jesus Christ has conquered death and sin to free us from their domination. He is the Lamb who was sacrificed for us, so we might receive a new life of forgiveness, love and joy. How beautiful are these three words: forgiveness, love and joy!”

“All that He has assumed has also been redeemed, liberated and saved,” Pope Francis said.

“Certainly, it is true that life puts us to the test, and sometimes we suffer for it,” – he continued – “Nevertheless, in these moments we are invited to turn our gaze to the crucified Jesus, who suffers for us and with us, as certain proof that God does not abandon us. Never forget, however, that in anguish or persecution - as in everyday suffering - we are always freed from the merciful hand of God, who raises us to himself and leads us to new life.”

The Pope said the love of God has no limits, and we are able to discover “ever-new signs” of God’s attention to us.

“Our whole life, though marked by the fragility of sin, is placed under the gaze of God who loves us,” Pope Francis said.

“How many pages of Holy Scripture tell us about the presence, closeness, and tenderness of God for all people, especially for children, the poor and the afflicted!” – the Holy Father said – “God has a great tenderness - a great love - for children, for the weak, for those discarded by society. The more we are in need, the more his gaze on us is filled with mercy. He shows a merciful compassion towards us because he knows our weaknesses. He knows our sins and forgive us; He always forgives!”

Pope Francis concluded his catechesis by asking the pilgrims to “let us open ourselves to Him, so we receive his Grace: Because, as he Psalm says, ‘with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is the fullness of redemption.”

Over 30,000 pilgrims attended the special Saturday Audience, which takes place once a month during the Jubilee of Mercy.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday thanked once again the members of Italy’s National Civil Protection Service, who had planned on being at the special Jubilee Audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“My thoughts first of all go to of Italy’s National Civil Protection Service who were supposed to be here today, but had to cancel their participation in order to continue their precious work in giving aid and assistance to the people affected by the earthquake on 24 August,” Pope Francis said during his greetings to Italian pilgrims.

The earthquake hit the regions of Italy surrounding the town of Norcia, killing nearly 300 people, mostly in the village of Amatrice. Another 400 people were injured, and over 2000 people sought refuge in emergency housing.

Over 4,400 people were involved in search-and-rescue operations, and Civil Protection officials are still helping in the region, which continues to suffer from aftershocks.

“I thank them for their dedication and the generous help offered during this time! Thank you, brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis said.

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Washington D.C., Sep 10, 2016 / 03:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On the 15th anniversary of the World Trade Center terror attacks, we shouldn't overlook how Middle Eastern Christians have suffered from the unintended consequences of U.S. post-9/11 foreign policy, says one expert.

“The U.S. Catholic bishops, in their statement after the Sept.11 attacks, made it clear that the response has to be a response that brings more peace for all, not just greater security for U.S. citizens,” said Maryann Cusimano Love, an international relations professor at the Catholic University of America.

U.S. Catholics must see themselves as part of “a global Church, and that as followers of Christ, the Prince of Peace, He came to bring peace for all, not for a narrow band,” she told CNA.

Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when 19 men affiliated with the terror group Al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial flights and directed three of the airplanes straight into the two World Trade Center buildings in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

The fourth hijacked flight crashed near Somerset, Pa. and was reportedly headed for the U.S. Capitol building. Almost 3,000 perished in the attacks.

In response, the U.S. began the “War on Terror” shortly after with the invasion of Afghanistan to defeat the Talibanin 2001, and then the War in Iraq in March, 2003.

At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks that were motivated in part by religious extremism, the U.S. was not able to properly grapple with the role of religion in international affairs, Love explained. Since then it has struggled to engage with religious actors in the right way.

“The U.S. government was pretty much blind in being able to deal with religious actors or religious factors in foreign policy,” she said of the time of the attacks.

“Our foreign policy organizations were primarily built to fight the Cold War. And in a fight against ‘godless Communists’,” she added, “you really didn’t need to understand religion that much.”

After the attacks, U.S. foreign policy swung to the opposite extreme to viewing religious actors “only as a problem” and a “source of conflict,” she added.

Thus, “it’s really taken a long time,” she said, to help those crafting U.S. foreign policy “to understand that religious actors can be a positive force in international politics for peace, for prosperity, for development, and not only or merely a source of conflict.”

Middle Eastern Christians and other religious minorities have also suffered greatly from the unintended consequences of U.S. post-9/11 foreign policy, despite the ultimately-prophetic warnings from Catholic leaders, including Pope St. John Paul II, against the War in Iraq, Love explained.

“Christians in the Middle East are in a fight for their lives,” she said, and “in a large part the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks certainly played a role in that.”

With the war beginning in 2003, attacks on Iraqi Christian communities increased and Christians left the country. While over 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq in 2003, there are fewer than 500,000 now.

Also, militant groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – which did not exist at the time of the U.S. invasion – came into Iraq, Love noted.

“One thing many Iraqi Christians will tell you, they had no love for Saddam Hussein, but they all point to that as a golden age, that their lives were so much better under that regime than they are now,” she said. “They said then we had one brutal dictator to worry about; now we have many. And the sources of instability are much larger, much wider. And they’re under threat from many more corridors.”

Moving forward, U.S. policy must take all religious actors – the good as well as the bad – into account, Love insisted.

“The U.S. foreign policy has always been created around governments, countries, states,” she said. “Yet that form is really recent. Most countries in the world today are between 25 and 50 years old.” And the services many countries boast of having – education and health care, for example – have been provided by religious actors for millennia.

And the positive stories of religious leaders must be highlighted, she said, in countries like Columbia, the Philippines, and Central African Republic where they are “risking their lives” to promote peace.

The U.S. must also remember that the universality of the Catholic faith, where members of every country and continent are Christian, as opposed to other faiths that are more geographically concentrated.

“That’s still the growing edge for U.S. foreign policy, to understand the depth and the breadth that religious actors bring to these issues and the positive contributions they can bring,” Love said.

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