Heartwrencher: Girl’s tough question throws pope off guard

The Pope’s last full day in the Philippines—an open-air Mass for up to 6 million people in Manila—began with an emotional youth gathering at a Catholic university in Manila, where he told the story of how he was moved by a question posed by a 12-year-old girl who had been abandoned. The meeting threw Francis off, as he put aside most of his own prepared speech to respond to her question.

Many children are abandoned by their parents. Many of them became victims and bad things have happened to them, like drug addiction and prostitution. Why does God allow this to happen, even if the children are not at fault? Why is it that only a few people help us?

Glyzelle Iris Palomar, 12, to Pope Francis

The Pope spoke to the crowd in his native Spanish, with an aide translating his words to English for the crowd of about 30,000 young people. “She is the only one who has put forward a question for which there is no answer and she was not even able to express it in words but rather in tears,” he said, visibly moved. “Why do children suffer?” he said.

I invite each one of you to ask yourselves, ‘Have I learned how to weep … when I see a hungry child, a child on the street who uses drugs, a homeless child, an abandoned child, an abused child, a child that society uses as a slave’?

Pope Francis

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