THE POPE CELEBRATES HIS 77TH BIRTHDAY
Vatican City, 17 December 2013 (VIS) – Today Pope Francis celebrates his 77th birthday and congratulations have arrived in the Vatican from all over the world. However, also in his city of birth, Buenos Aires, citizens are celebrating the birthday of their former archbishop: the parishioners of the diaconate of Boca-Barrajas, one of the most popular and troubled areas of the city, will spend the day in Plaza Constitucion where a “missionary tent” has been erected to welcome the “invisible” inhabitants of the capital. The area hosts a large railway station and the principal bus terminal, where the “street people” of the city gather - migrants, the unemployed, the homeless, prostitutes – and where every year the then Archbishop Bergoglio used to celebrate Mass for the victims of human trafficking. In Italy, the Constitutional Court sent a telegram to the Pope, through the secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, congratulating him for his “profound and intense pastoral work in...