CARPI, Italy — Greeted by tens of thousands of faithful, Pope Frances on Sunday visited Italy’s northern Emilia Romagna region that has largely been rebuilt after a pair of deadly earthquakes five years ago, offering hope to central Italy, which is still reeling from more devastating temblors last year.
Also on Sunday, Prince Charles visited the center of Amatrice, a town that bore the brunt of central Italy’s Aug. 24 earthquake, which killed hundreds of people.
Wearing a hard hat, the Prince of Wales was accompanied by the head of Italy’s civil protection agency on a half-hour tour that took him to the town’s medieval bell tower, which stopped at the hour of the August quake, surviving only to be toppled by the stronger shocks in October.
The pope’s first stop was the quake-damaged Duomo cathedral of Carpi, where he laid a bouquet of white flowers at the foot of a statue of the Madonna inside. After years of restoration, the cathedral reopened just last weekend.
‘‘There are those who remain buried in the rubble of life,’’ Francis said in his homily before an estimated 20,000 gathered in the piazza outside the cathedral for an open-air Mass. ‘‘And there are those, like you, who with the help of God rise from the rubble to rebuild.’’
Another 50,000 people watched the Mass on large screens throughout the city of 70,000.
During his daylong visit, the pope also was to meet with families who lost loved ones in the quake and hold a discussion with priests, nuns, and seminarians.
The Emilia Romagna rebuilding after the magnitude-6.1 and magnitude-5.8 quakes that killed 28 people in 2012 has often been cited as exemplary. It included bringing together politicians, entrepreneurs, and bishops to decide common priorities.
In Amatrice, Charles told the mayor, Sergio Pirozzi, that ‘‘the people of Britain mind very much what’s happened to you all here.’’
The heir to the British throne is on a three-country trip seen as an effort to reassure European Union nations that Britain remains a close ally despite its impending departure from the bloc.
