Cindy Wooden, November 23, 2016 | National Catholic Reporter
With fewer than 10,000 pilgrims and visitors present and with rain forecast, the Vatican moved the audience indoors to the Vatican audience hall.
The pope, with a voice that was a bit hoarse, focused on the spiritual works of mercy of “counseling the doubtful” and “instructing the ignorant,” which he said was not meant as an insult, but simply as a description of a person who does not know something.
Calling a lack of access to education a “grave injustice,” Francis asked those in the audience hall to give a round of applause to teachers and the “long list of saints, who throughout the ages, brought education to the most disadvantaged.”
Education, he said, is both a work of evangelization and a work of mercy and justice because it recognizes the dignity of the human person, fights discrimination and, by preparing people for jobs, combats poverty.