A visibly indignant Pope Francis had to pull himself away from a woman in a crowd in St Peter's Square on Tuesday after she grabbed his hand and yanked him towards her. Pope Francis was walking through the square in Vatican City and greeting pilgrims on his way to see the large Nativity scene set up in the huge, cobbled esplanade.
Pope Francis had been making his way to the Nativity scene in Vatican City on Tuesday, New Year's Eve. When he began to walk away from the crowd that had gathered to greet him, video shows a woman grabbing his hand and yanking him toward her.
He became visibly upset, slapping the woman's hand in an attempt to extricate himself. Footage of the altercation also appears to show him shouting at the woman.
Prior to the incident, the woman had made the sign of the cross. She addressed the 83-year-old Pope as she took his hand but it is unclear what she was trying to tell him.
During his New Year's wishes to the public at St. Peter's Square Wednesday, Francis apologized for losing his patience, the Associated Press reported.
"So many times we lose patience. Me, too,” he said. “I say ‘excuse me’ for the bad example."
We certainly would not want a bad example in the Vatican.
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“Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).