The Latest: Pope meets girl whose artificial limbs he funded

KRAKOW, Poland (AP) — The Latest on the pope’s visit to Poland (all times local):

12:40 a.m.

A Vatican spokesman says that Pope Francis has met with a child without legs for whom he bought artificial limbs.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters that the meeting took place Saturday in Krakow during the pope’s five-day pilgrimage to Poland.

Lombardi says that Francis was arriving at the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy in Krakow on Saturday when we met with the girl who had been fitted with prosthetic limbs that he had paid for.

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11:25 a.m.

Pope Francis is encouraging his churchmen to leave their comfort zones and tend to the needy on the peripheries.

He issued the call as he celebrated a Mass in a shrine in Poland dedicated to the late Polish pope, St. John Paul II. During Mass, the pope said that Jesus wanted his church “to be a church on the move, a church that goes out into the world.”

He delivered his words in a large modern church, the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II, in Krakow.

He said that Jesus’ call to his disciples to minister to the world is also relevant today to church men and women.

Francis said: “This call is also addressed to us. How can we fail to hear its echo in the great appeal of Saint John Paul II: ‘Open the doors’?”

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8:45 a.m.

Pope Francis has prayed at the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Lagiewniki as he begins a day of religious ceremonies during a visit to Poland.

Nuns and priests, singing and waving little banners, greeted the pope as he entered the church in the Krakow district.

He then prayed before the chapel of St. Faustina, a Polish mystic who was canonized under Pope John Paul II, himself now also a saint.

Later he will visit the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II, near the Lagiewniki shrine, consecrated in 2013. The lower church houses the relics of John Paul, while his body is entombed inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

Francis is taking part in World Youth Day, a global celebration of young Catholics, during his five-day visit to Poland.