"When, at Christmas, we place the statue of the Infant Jesus in the manger, the nativity scene suddenly comes alive. God appears as a child, for us to take into our arms," the pope said.

“Consumerism is a virus that attacks the faith at its roots, because it makes you believe that life depends only on what you have, and so you forget God," the pope said.

Pope Francis faced questions regarding Vatican finances arising from recent events that have provoked concern about the possibility of mismanagement of the Peter’s Pence charity and on nuclear weapons, power and war.

“We need to work together to foster awareness that if one member of our family suffers, we all suffer,” Pope Francis said.

“The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of atomic weapons is immoral,” he said. “We will be judged on this.”

This is Francis’ second visit to Japan. He came here in October 1987 to visit Jesuit missionaries as provincial. 

The pope reminded priests, religious and seminarians that the fervor of evangelization “is nurtured by a double encounter: with the face of the Lord and with the faces of our brothers and sisters.”

To be “a missionary disciple is not a mercenary of the faith,” Pope Francis told the Catholics of Thailand, but rather “a humble mendicant” who longs to bring missing family members to the Sunday table.t

Pope Francis spent his first full day in Thailand meeting with the country’s prime minister and supreme patriarch of Buddhists.

On the eve of Pope Francis’ visit to Japan, an exclusive interview with Yoshio Kajiyama, S.J., the Hiroshima-born former provincial of the country’s Jesuits.