The pope repeatedly quoted the “Good-humoured Prayer,” attributed to St. Thomas More, to his audience, saying he has been praying it for 40 years. “Do you know that prayer? You should know it,” he said.
He also shook hands with everyone in attendance.
“I said, 'Thank you for inviting me, God bless you,'” Louis-Dreyfus said afterwards. “And he said, 'God bless you,' so that was amazing,” she added. “He spoke in such a beautiful way. I mean, he translated for me. So I thought his comments were just beautiful.”
Whoopi Goldberg joked that she offered the Pope a cameo in “Sister Act 3” when she met him last year (“He's kind of a fan,” she said at the time), but said the visit was “very quick and just really loving and happy.”
Some of the comedians at Friday's event have been involved in work that has raised Catholic eyebrows, including Locke, who played Rufus, the “13th Apostle,” in the 1999 film “Dogma.” The movie was criticized by some Christian groups as disrespectful and blasphemous. In an interview at the time, the comedian defended the movie, saying, “It's disrespectful to God to be outraged by it.”
At the end of the audience, Francis blessed those present: “Continue to encourage people, especially those who struggle to look at life with hope. Help us to look with a smile at reality, with all its contradictions, and to dream of a better world!”
The Pope then returned to more serious matters, traveling to southern Italy to attend the G7 summit of leaders of the world's richest democracies, where he discussed the impact of artificial intelligence.