Vatican City, Sep 18, 2021 / 08:30 am
Pope Francis invoked Abraham Lincoln in a video message released on Saturday to a safeguarding summit organized by the Catholic Church in Central and Eastern Europe.
Addressing participants in the meeting in Warsaw, Poland, the pope referred to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered 41 days before the president’s assassination in 1865.
“‘With malice toward none, with charity for all,’ I urge you to be humble instruments of the Lord, at the service of the victims of abuse, considering them as companions and protagonists of a common future, learning from each other to become more faithful and resilient so that, together, we might face the challenges of the future,” the pope said in a video message issued on Sept. 18.
Pope Francis has referred to the 16th president of the United States before. In his historic speech to the U.S. Congress in 2015, the pope singled out Lincoln alongside four other notable Americans, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.