"At the end of the half-hour meeting," Bruni said, "Pope Francis and the young people recited the Our Father together, "with their thoughts turned toward martyred Ukraine."
Pope Francis criticized Portuguese Catholic institutions for disregarding a decades-old sexual scandal that damaged their credibility and lost followers.
Vatican officials said the procedure had been agreed to in previous days because the pontiff suffers from recurrent, painful and worsening sub-occlusive syndrome due to a lacerated incisional hernia.
Known as Towards Full Presence, the document presented by the Vatican's Dicastery of Communication to the media on May 29 stated, "Even on social media, we have to decide whether to be Good Samaritans or indifferent bystanders."
In his message for the 57th World Day of Social Communications, Pope Francis wrote that people involved in social communications should communicate honestly and sincerely.
"The dicastery is also working on the preparation of a text that will specifically concern men and women who, having a failed marriage behind them, live in new unions," Farrel said.