Celebrating Mass in Kazakhstan on September 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, Pope Francis preached on the reading from the Book of Numbers, about “the serpents that bite” and “a serpent that saves.”

The Pope said that the people of Kazakhstan have experience with the serpents that bite, alluding to years of violent persecution and Communist tyranny. But he encouraged them to remember the bronze serpent that Moses raised up, as a type of the Crucified Christ.