Lately, Muslims have been reaching out to Christians in northern Nigeria to seek reunion and deliver a message of peace, hope and solidarity that all Muslims are peace-loving people.

These “pastors and martyrs for the faith,” Pope Francis said, “re-appropriated and handed down to the Romanian people a precious legacy that we can sum up in two words: freedom and mercy.”

“Complicated and sorrow-filled situations from the past must not be forgotten or denied,” he told the assembled during his homily, “yet neither must they be an obstacle or an excuse standing in the way of our desire to live together as brothers and sisters.”

Following attacks on houses of worship in Sri Lanka, New Zealand and the United States, Muslim and Jewish leaders sign a joint call for cooperation among different faiths.

When Pope Francis makes his 30th international trip, visiting Romania in late May, he is likely to receive a different, more reserved welcome than St. John Paul II did 20 years ago, said an expert in Catholic-Orthodox relations.

"Minister Farrakhan could have taken the opportunity to deliver a unifying message of God’s love for all his children. Instead, he repeatedly smeared the Jewish people, using a combination of thinly veiled discriminatory rhetoric and outright slander."