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.”

Pope Francis, in his scripted address, reminded his Orthodox brothers that “the bonds of faith that unite us go back to the Apostles.”

The big story in the European elections, writes Austen Ivereigh, was the collapse of the centrist governing coalition, with a multiplicity of small parties on the rise. One hopeful sign: A record voter turnout.

The key, the filmmakers say, was to shift the spotlight off of Francis onto ordinary people who have been impacted by him.

The path to building an inclusive society is one where every person is seen as a brother or sister and “where the weak, the poor and the least are no longer seen as undesirables that keep the ‘machine’ from functioning,” the pope said on May 31, the first day of his visit to Romania.