On the viewers, Francis repeatedly cited the “Prayer for Good Humor” attributed to St. Thomas Extra, which he mentioned he had prayed for 40 years. “Are you aware that prayer? It is best to understand it,” he mentioned.
He additionally shook arms with each individual current.
“I mentioned, ‘Thanks for inviting me and God bless you,’” Ms. Louis-Dreyfus associated afterward. “And he mentioned, ‘God bless you,’ in order that was one thing.” She added: “He spoke superbly — I imply, they gave us a translation. So I really assume his feedback had been attractive.”
Whoopi Goldberg, who has joked that she supplied the pope a cameo within the film “Sister Act 3” throughout a meet-up with him final yr — “he appears to be a little bit of a fan,” she supplied on the time — mentioned that this go to had been “very quick and actually loving and made me completely satisfied.”
A number of the comedians at Friday’s occasion have been concerned in initiatives which have raised Catholic eyebrows — together with Mr. Rock, who performed Rufus, “the thirteenth apostle,” within the 1999 movie “Dogma,” which some Christian teams criticized as being disrespectful and blasphemous. In an interview on the time, the comic defended the movie, saying, “You’re extra disrespectful to God if you happen to rise up in arms over this.”
On the finish of viewers, Francis blessed these current. “Proceed to cheer folks up, particularly those that have the toughest time taking a look at life with hope,” he instructed them. “Assist us, with a smile, to see actuality with its contradictions, and to dream of a greater world!”
The pontiff then returned to extra critical issues: He traveled to southern Italy to affix the Group of seven summit, a gathering of leaders from the world’s wealthiest giant democracies, in a dialogue on the implications of synthetic intelligence.
