On Saturday, Pope Francis will meet with the children with impaired vision and the children from Ukraine who arrived in Italy to escape the horrors of war.
This is reported by "VaticanNews".
On Saturday, June 4, 2022, after a two-year pause caused by the pandemic, the Children's Courtyard returns to the Vatican. We are talking about an initiative within the framework of the Courtyard of the Gentiles project, launched by the Pontifical Council for Cultural Affairs in order to promote dialogue between believers and non-believers.
The children's initiative consists of projects dedicated to the youngest of difficult social contexts, which aim to convey and build with them the fundamental values of friendship, solidarity, beauty and love, and Pope Francis meets with participants every year in early June.
The eighth such meeting, which will take place in the courtyard of St. Damasus in the Vatican, will be attended by about 160 children and teenagers who are wards of the Sant Alessio Margherita di Savoia cell in Rome, which works with visually impaired children, many of whom are blind. Their friends and classmates will come with them because the purpose of this event is to promote integration and inclusivity and fight discrimination and prejudice.
As part of the one-year educational program that preceded the meeting with the Pope, adults and children learned to look at the world through the eyes of the heart, stepping over the limitations of any prejudice, in a spirit of solidarity and openness to others. In this vein, children from Ukraine who fled the war and receive assistance at the St Sophia Church in Rome will also take part in the meeting with the Holy Father.