Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow met Pope Francis in the Vatican.
A Scottish charity founder has been given encouraging words of guidance by none other than his holiness Pope Francis.
Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, who created global school feeding charity Mary’s Meals, met with the Pontiff at the end of his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square.
Accompanied by Francesco Stefanini, executive director of Mary’s Meals Italy, MacFarlane-Barrow told Pope Francis about the work the charity does to provide a daily meal in school to more than 1.1 million of the world’s poorest children.
The Pope was said to grasp the wrists of his two visitors and, speaking with great intensity, said: “Avanti! Avanti! Avanti! Che Dio benedica il vostro lavoro.” This translates as: “Onwards! Onwards! Onwards! May God bless your work.”
Onwards! Onwards! Onwards! May God bless your work.
Following the meeting at the Vatican, MacFarlane-Barrow said: “Those forceful words of Pope Francis, spoken from the depths of his heart, will remain forever a source of encouragement to me, and I hope for all of us in the Mary’s Meals family.
“He urges us to go forward – always onwards towards that next hungry child waiting, towards this vision of ours that every child in the world might receive a meal every day in their place of education. We will remember his words especially whenever we feel discouraged, or tempted to think that the obstacles are too great.
“I am so profoundly grateful to the Scottish bishops who asked the Holy Father to meet with me and was so proud to be able to present the entire Mary’s Meals family to him again, this time in the form of my book, which tells of our shared story.”
Pope Francis was gifted a special copy of The Shed That Fed A Million Children, MacFarlane-Barrow’s bestselling book, which tells the story of how Mary’s Meals began by feeding just 200 children in Malawi in 2002.
The specially-bound edition, the first ever printed in the Pope’s native language of Spanish, bore the words "un regalo para el Papa Francisco" on the cover – ‘a gift for Pope Francis’.
