The Pope highlighted the “scandal” of Jesus during a Mass he celebrated to formally close Catholic Social Week that ended on 7 July in the city of Trieste.

During the Mass, attended by nearly 100 bishops, some 260 priests and roughly 8,500 people from Italy and neighbouring countries, the Pope discussed Sunday's Gospel reading that described how no prophet is welcome in his own land, and that when Jesus spoke to his own community, he too “was a cause of scandal to them”.

Focusing on the word and theme of scandal, the Pope said the scandal of Jesus was that he was not a powerful God who satisfied every desire, but was a humble and apparently weak God who died a painful death, and who demands that his followers overcome their own shortcomings and selfishness.

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