Peace begins when each person decides to accept it as a gift and live at peace with everyone throughout the day, Pope Francis said.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, said he and Pope Francis prayed together when they met at the Vatican April 20.

While the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are the marks of a righteous individual, the virtues of faith, hope and love emphasize a connection to other people fueled by belief in God and reliance on prayer, Pope Francis said.

Candidates to the priesthood must integrate their spiritual, intellectual and community lives so they become pastors who can respond to the needs of their communities, Pope Francis said.

Historians serve the common good when they seek historical truth and not an ideological interpretation of events, Pope Francis said.

Pope Pius VII, a prisoner of Napoleon from 1809 to 1814, endured humiliation but successfully resisted all attempts to fracture the unity of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis said.

When Jesus called himself the “good shepherd,” he was telling people not only that he was their guide, but that they were important to him and “that he thinks of each of us as the love of his life,” Pope Francis said.

The Catholic Church in the United States is grappling with a tendency to become more “auto-referential” and withdraw itself from the international stage and universal church, Pope Francis’ representative to the United States said.

The pope’s diplomats are men of faith located all over the world to uphold the pope’s positions on international matters, to edify the universal church and to serve the Gospel, said Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister.

Be loving and compassionate fathers to the marginalized, Pope Francis told members of the Brothers of Christian Instruction, commonly known as the La Mennais Brothers.