Pope Francis said, “There were deaconesses at the beginning [of the church], but [the question is] was theirs a sacramental ordination or not?”

He visited Mother Teresa’s memorial, saw relics of “the saint of the slums” and recited a prayer that he had personally composed. He praised God for the gift of her life and prayed for her intercession for North Macedonia.

Pope Francis is the first pope to visit North Macedonia, where Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born.

Like Saint Francis, the pope said, “each of us is called to follow in his footsteps by becoming a peacemaker, an ‘artisan’ of peace.”

Even as pope, Francis considers himself a parish priest—“the world’s parish priest” as he once told a friend. This morning, he presided in a small Catholic enclave more than 100 miles from Sofia, the capital city.

The meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Neofit was only the second meeting in more than a thousand years between a pope and a Bulgarian Orthodox patriarch.

“God Bless Bulgaria," Pope Francis prayed, and "keep her in peace and ever hospitable, and grant her prosperity and happiness.”

Pope Francis will visit Bulgaria and North Macedonia from May 5 to 7, two majority Orthodox countries with very small Catholic populations.

Pope Francis prayed for victims of the attacks in Sri Lanka and called for peace, highlighting 18 conflicts around the world.

Pope Francis called on Christians not to give into a “tomb psychology,” and quoted the American poet Emily Dickinson, who wrote “We never know how high we are/Till we are called to rise.”