Jesus’ healing presence in the Eucharist can “fill with tenderness” the voids and wounds produced by sin in individual lives and in society, Pope Francis said on Friday.

In a meeting at the Vatican with a pilgrimage group led by the Sister Disciples of Jesus in the Eucharist on Aug. 25, the pope noted that in the eyes of the world, it might appear “absurd” to begin confronting societal problems by prayers on one’s knees of “adoration and reparation,” but that it is always effective.

Pope Francis pointed out that the story behind the founding of the sisters’ religious order and the revival it sparked gives witness to this reality. The Sister Disciples of Jesus in the Eucharist were founded in one of the poorest dioceses in southern Italy by Servant of God Bishop Raffaello Delle Nocche in the wake of World War I and the devastating Spanish flu pandemic.

The sisters were to be “poor servants of a poor people.” Pope Francis explained: “At the center of their lives was the Eucharist, ‘a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity,’ as the Second Vatican Council teaches us (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 47).”