The farmers’ protests which in recent weeks have spread across Europe finally reach the Vatican, with farmers walking a cow around St Peter’s Square during Pope Francis’s Angelus prayer in which the pontiff calls for peace in Sudan and Mozambique.
Different Italian farmer groups have been staging small protests since early January from Sicily to Turin, complaining of falling incomes and rising costs.
The Holy See’s diplomatic mission had announced that Pope Francis had on Thursday replaced a 79-year-old cardinal who recently went missing in Panama and was later found in an apparently disoriented state.
Cardinal Jose Luis Lacunza
Cardinal Jose Luis Lacunza’s resignation as bishop of the diocese of David was accepted on the grounds of age, the Apostolic Nunciature said in a statement.
Spanish-born Lacunza had previously offered to resign due to age when he turned 75, as all Catholic bishops do under Church norms, but Francis kept him in office.