PARIS -- Pope Francis said he was "moved and saddened" by the attacks in Paris but confessed that "I don't understand these things. They are difficult to understand, carried out by human beings."
The pope, speaking in a heavy and measured voice, made the comments in a phone call broadcast on the Italian Bishop's Conference TG2000 on Saturday.
Asked if there can be a religious justification for such attacks, Francis responded: "Religious and human. This is not human."
Francis says he was "close to the much-beloved people of France, I am close to the relatives of the victims and I pray for all of them."