Pope Francis Falls Over During Open Air Mass

Pope Francis has tripped and fallen whilst presiding over Mass on the latest leg of his visit to Poland.

The 79-year-old pontiff was blessing the altar at the start of the open-air Mass in Czestochowa when he tripped on a step.

He was helped up by aides and did not appear to be hurt, continuing the service for tens of thousands of people and reading his homily.

Pope Francis suffers from sciatica, a medical condition in which pain sometimes shoots down the leg from his lower back.

In February he fell over after an eager member of a crowd in Mexico pulled his arm.

He crashed down into a man in a wheelchair, and although he recovered and kissed the man on the head, he looked visibly irritated.

On his current trip, he prayed before Poland's holiest icon, the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora, and thanked Poles for holding on to their Catholic faith in difficult times

The pontiff praised what he called "the contagious power of a genuine faith, passed down from family to family".

Poles flocked to the shrine to pray when martial law was declared by the communist government in the early 1980s.

The late Pope John Paul II visited the shrine often during his trips to his homeland.

He donated the blood-stained white sash he was wearing on May 13, 1981, when he was shot in St Peter's Square at the Vatican to the shrine.

Speaking after a Catholic priest was murdered in France on Tuesday, Pope Francis said the world was at war, but it was not a religious one.

"The world is at war because it has lost peace," he said.

"There is a war of interest, there is a war for money, a war for natural resources, a war to dominate people.

"Some might think it is war of religion. It is not. All religions want peace. Others want war."

Pope Francis' main task in Poland is to preside at an international gathering of Catholic youth in Krakow.