Another Chinese pilgrim approached the pope on her knees while the pope, visibly moved, tried to raise her up. He also greeted the other pilgrims, who were waving Chinese flags and holding a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which he blessed.

In his main audience talk, part of a series on Christian hope, Pope Francis reflected on St. Paul's call in his Letter to the Romans for Christians to be "joyful in hope" and sincere in their love.

A Christian's "highest vocation" is the call to love and charity. However, the pope said, St. Paul also warns of "the risk that our charity can become hypocritical."

"Hypocrisy can infiltrate anywhere, even in our way of loving," he said, especially when acts of love or charity are done "to put ourselves on display or so that we feel fulfilled."

Christians, he added, must ask themselves if their love is sincere and "not that of a soap opera."

"There is a false, misleading idea behind all this: namely that if we love, it is because we are good, as if charity was a creation of man, a product of our heart," the pope said.

Charity and love, he continued, are a grace that is meant to shine forth what "the Lord gives us and what we freely receive."

St. Paul's warning, the pope explained, is "not so much a reproach but rather an encouragement to revive hope in us."

"We need the Lord to continually renew this gift in our hearts through the experience of his mercy," Pope Francis said. "In this way, we will be able to appreciate the little, simple and ordinary things again, and we will be able to love others as God loves them."

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