Pope Francis on Sunday met with a group of those unseen warriors, in the form of contemplative women religious, and urged them to keep pressing the spiritual battle against what he calls a “throw-away” culture.

We thank you in a special way for the holiness that has flourished in our land. Our Archdiocesan Church has been made fruitful by the apostolic labours of Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, enlarged by the prayer, penance and charity “of Saint Rose of Lima and Saint Martin de Porres, adorned by the missionary zeal of Saint Francisco Solano and the humble service of Saint Juan Macías.

Seeing you here, I get the impression that you took advantage of this visit to get out for some fresh air! Mother Soledad, I thank you for your words of welcome, and I thank all of you, who “from the silence of the cloister walk ever by my side”.

think of the mothers and grandmothers of this nation; they are a true driving force for the life and the families of Peru. What would Peru be like, without its mothers and grandmothers! What would our lives be like without them! Our love for Mary must help us to feel appreciation and gratitude for women, for our mothers and grandmothers, who are a bastion in the life in our cities. Almost always in silence, they carry life forward. It is the silence and strength of hope. Thank you for your witness.

A good spiritual test is to ask ourselves whether we can laugh at ourselves. Laughter saves us from the “self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others”.[1] Brothers and sisters, laugh in community, and not at the community or at others! Let us be on guard against people so important that they have forgotten to smile in their lives.

An indescribable spirit of joy and hope, mixed with desolation and abandonment, is what Pope Francis encountered Saturday in the Buenos Aires neighborhood in Trujillo, in northern Peru, in a town still mourning the loss caused by the deadly floods of early 2017.

In the middle of the Peruvian jungle, where children are prostituted in bars in broad daylight and women sold to modern-day slave owners, Pope Francis laid out what amounts to a papal version of the #MeToo movement on Friday, decrying violence against women and sexual exploitation.