Hillary Clinton has described how she was inspired to come to terms with her defeat to Donald Trump in last year's presidential campaign by listening to the TED talk given by Pope Francis.
The former Democratic candidate wrote in her new book published this week, What Happened, that she found the Pope's video message in April 'amazing'.
According to America Magazine, she wrote: 'He called for a "revolution of tenderness." What a phrase! He said, "We all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent 'I,' separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone."
She continued: 'He said that tenderness "means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future."'
She added that the Pope's talk is among the things she has thought about during long walks recently near her New York home.
'I'm coming around to the idea that what we need more than anything at this moment in America is what you might call "radical empathy,"' she wrote.
Pope Francis's message centred around the idea that 'a single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you'.
In his message delivered from the Vatican, the Pope said: 'Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the "other" is not a statistic, or a number. We all need each other.'
The Pope emphasised that 'everything is connected' and of how 'life is about interactions'. He said: 'None of us is an autonomous and independent "I"...We can only build the future by standing together, including everyone'.
He talked about the need for 'educating people to a true solidarity' in order to overcome the 'culture of waste' that favours products over people.
'The other has a face,' said Pope Francis. 'The "you" is...a person to take care of'.
The Pope quoted Mother Teresa and the parable of the Good Samaritan, before describing 'hope' as 'a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree'.
Pope Francis referred to what he called 'the revolution of tenderness,' which means 'being on the same level as the other'. he said. This tenderness is not weakness but strength, he said: 'the path of solidarity...of humility'.
The Pope concluded by presenting the future of humankind as not in the hands of politicians or big companies but, most of all, in the hands of those people 'who recognize the other as a "you" and themselves as part of an "us"'.
Because, he said, 'We all need each other'.
Elsewhere in her book, Clinton discusses abortion, and how her party should approach the issue.
She notes that she 'picked as my running mate Tim Kaine, a Democrat personally opposed to abortion because of his Catholic faith but supportive of women's rights as a matter of law and policy'.
But she argues that abortion rights must remain a priority of the party. 'But when personal views on abortion become public actions—votes on legislation or judges or funding that erode women's rights—that's a different matter,' she writes. 'We have to remain a big tent, but a big tent is only as strong as the poles that hold it up. Reproductive rights is central to women's rights and women's health, and it's one of the most important tent poles we've got.'
In response to that, Kristen Day, head of Democrats for Life, tweeted, 'Hillary's comments make me happy I did not vote for her. Abortion extremism will kill the Dem Party.'
