Christians.
The Pope is telling us that, to be Christians, to bear witness to the love of Christ, to the reality of Christ and his love for us, shown in his life and his willingness to lay down his life for us on the cross, we must show our love for the poor and the downtrodden in real, practical, evident ways.
His Pontificate will be centred on Christ, he said, and not on ‘the Pope’ or ‘the Church.’ ‘Christ is the centre! Without him, Peter and the Church would not exist and would have no reason to exist. And it will be centred also on poverty, on the poor: How I wish for a poor Church, and for a Church for the poor. Never forget the poor.’
‘That is why the name of Francis came to me in my heart, Francis of Assisi. The man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loved…’