Pope Francis on Sunday visited a Rome parish for the first time, choosing a church on the outskirts of the city following his call for clergymen to take God's message to the "fringes" of society. Church bells rang out in the northern Rome suburb of Prima Porta as the pope was greeted by hundreds of cheering faithful who waved handkerchiefs in the white-and-yellow colours of the Vatican. "The pope is in the Vatican, I am here as the bishop of Rome," Francis told the congregation at an open-air mass outside the Church of Saints Elizabeth and Zachary in the working-class area.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis criticized what he called "savage capitalism" on a visit to a food kitchen on Tuesday, in an address in which he called for the values of generosity and charity to be revived. "A savage capitalism has taught the logic of profit at any cost, of giving in order to get, of exploitation without thinking of people... and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing," the pope said.

Pope Francis during a mass on Wednesday condemned as "slave labour" the work conditions of victims of a factory collapse in Bangladesh in which more than 400 people have been found dead, Vatican radio reported. "A headline that really struck me on the day of the tragedy in Bangladesh was 'Living on 38 euros a month'. That is what the people who died were being paid. This is called slave labour," the pope was quoted as saying during his homily. dt/lc

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday hailed Pope Francis as "a spiritual leader of the world" and emphasised goals of social justice shared between the Vatican and the United Nations. "It is very important to meet a spiritual leader of the world," Ban said at the start of his meeting with the Argentine pope, who last month became the first non-European leader of the world's Catholics in nearly 1,300 years. "The Holy See and the UN share common goals and ideas," said Ban -- one of the first world leaders to be received at an audience by the new pontiff.