The pope also urged prayers for all those who endure persecution because of their faith today.

“The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of atomic weapons is immoral,” he said. “We will be judged on this.”

Sivori, a 77-year-old member of the Salesian order, is an assistant principal at a Salesian school in Udon Thani, in northeast Thailand.

The pope reminded priests, religious and seminarians that the fervor of evangelization “is nurtured by a double encounter: with the face of the Lord and with the faces of our brothers and sisters.”

To be “a missionary disciple is not a mercenary of the faith,” Pope Francis told the Catholics of Thailand, but rather “a humble mendicant” who longs to bring missing family members to the Sunday table.t

Pope Francis spent his first full day in Thailand meeting with the country’s prime minister and supreme patriarch of Buddhists.