He began a new series of catechesis on prayer and reflected on the story of Bartimaeus.
He greeted the Portuguese in Fatima who followed the Audience by streaming.
The pope said despite sometimes feeling insignificant, human beings “are not nothing.”
“If life, with all its bitterness, at times threatens to suffocate in us the gift of prayer, we have but to contemplate a starry sky, a sunset, a flower, to rekindle the spark of gratitude,” he said.