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Francis celebrates 10th anniversary with first 'Popecast'

Pontiff says peace would be the best anniversary gift

Redazione Ansa

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 13 - Pope Francis celebrated the 10th anniversary of his election to the helm of the Catholic Church on Monday with the release of his first podcast, or 'Popecast', on Vatican media.
    When asked what would be the best anniversary gift, Francis replied: "peace, peace is needed.
    "I didn't think I would be the pope of the time of the Third World War," the Argentine pontiff said.
    "It causes me suffering to see these young men not come back - whether they are Ukrainian or Russian makes no difference to me.
     "It's hard".
    The 86-year-old said that he has been "living in tension" since becoming pope "Time flies," he said.
    "When you want to grasp today, it is already yesterday. To live like this is something new" He said that the "the most beautiful moment" of his pontificate was the audience he had with grandparents from all over the world on September 28, 2014, in St Peter's Square.
    The first pontiff from Latin America, who replaced Benedict XVI after the shock retirement of his late conservative predecessor, marked the anniversary with a private Mass with the cardinals present in Rome at the Santa Marta residence where he lives inside the Vatican.
    The pope, who is in generally good health despite a knee problem that sometimes forces him to use a wheelchair, said Sunday that he was not yet ready to revise the Catholic Church's obligation for clerical celibacy.
    "I am not yet ready to review it, but obviously it is a question of discipline, which today is there and tomorrow may not be, and has nothing to do with dogma," he said in an interview with the Argentine website Perfil.
    This clarified what he said two days previously in an interview with another Argentinean site, Infobae, on the fact that celibacy, being "a discipline" and "a temporary prescription", could be revised (ANSA).
   

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