Pope Francis on Monday said the pilot on the flight that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas recently took to Rome should be pitied because Abbas told him it was "full of nuns".
"Poor pilot," Francis told a group of Jordanian nuns from the Carmelite and Rosary orders he met at the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on Monday.
Many of the nuns were among those who flew from Jordan to Rome aboard the same plane as Abbas for Sunday's canonisation of two 19th-century Palestinian nuns, Vatican Radio reported.
Marie Alphonsine Ghattas of Jerusalem and Mariam Bawardy of Galilee have become the first Palestinian Arab saints.
Francis urged the nuns to join him in praying for "an end to the interminable war" in the Middle East and to pray for "persecuted Christians".
