"A few months ago, a friend of mine, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, and I had a dream much like yours, that made us want to make a commitment and sign a document that says that faith must lead us believers to see other persons as our brothers and sisters," he said.
"Think of Mother Teresa: when she lived here, she could not have imagined where her life would have ended up. Yet she kept dreaming and tried to see the face of Jesus, her great love, in all those people on the sides of the road. She dreamed in a big way, and this is why she also loved in a big way," Francis said.
Earlier in the day, Pope Francis visited the Mother Teresa Memorial House in Skopje, the saint's former home-turned-museum.
While Mother Teresa is commonly associated with Kolkata, where she performed much of her apostolate, she spent the first 17 years of her life as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje before receiving her call to a vocation as a missionary sister in 1928.
"Our world is weary, it has aged. The world is divided … yet how forcefully do we hear our Lord's words: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God," he said.
"Dreaming helps us to keep alive our certainty that another world is indeed possible, and that we are called to get involved, to help build that world through our work, our efforts and our actions," Pope Francis said.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.