Bishop Gianfranco Todisco said he wrote to the pope last year saying he wanted to return to his work as a missionary.

"I hope that this visit will be an embrace of consolation and of encouragement to all Christians in the Middle East," the pope said.

At Rome's Basilica of St. Bartholomew, a shrine to modern martyrs, Pope Francis presided over an evening prayer service April 22, honoring Christians killed under Nazism, communism, dictatorships and terrorism.

The conference brought together six lay people from different countries “to reflect on the post-synod apostolic exhortation that has aroused grave perplexities and widespread unease in numerous components of the Catholic world.”

Christianity is not a relic laid in a museum; it is not a book entombed in an archive. It lives in the living people of God.