Six months later she was still struggling to understand why she and her supporters should be judged so differently from Trump and his supporters.

However in a new book she has just published, Clinton explains how Pope Francis and his TED talk helped her move on and heal.

"He called for a ‘revolution of tenderness,'" Clinton writes.

"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.'".

In the TED talk, Francis "subtly referenced the shift toward isolationism and fearmongering that spread across America and many European countries last year," Clinton says.

"He pointed out: 'Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our hearts'."

Coincidentally, his talk was published a year after Clinton released a campaign commercial called "Love and Kindness,".

She used this phrase while on the campaign trail so she could counter Trump's inflammatory rhetoric.

In the aftermath of the election, she says she lost sight of that ideal.

She goes on to explain that Francis's talk has inspired her to embrace "radical empathy,".

This is the idea that, despite our deep societal and ideological divides, it's crucial to "recapture a sense of common humanity" and to "try to walk in the shoes of people who don't see the world the way we do."

Clinton says after considering Francis's message, she was faced with two choices for how she wanted to live out the rest of her life:

"I can carry around my bitterness forever, or I can open my heart once more to love and kindness," she wrote. "That's the path I choose."

Source

• America magazine
• Washington Post
• Image: CNN

Affirming that the world's future is not in the hands of politicians or big companies but mostly "in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a ‘you' and themselves as part of an ‘us'", his talk offered three messages.

The first message is about our connections with others.

Francis said he liked the conference title "The Future You", explaining "while looking at tomorrow, it invites us to open a dialogue today."

He said it enables us to look at the future through a ‘you'…The future is made of you's…because life flows through our relations with others".

He said he often asks himself "why them and not me" when he sees people less fortunate.

His second TED message is about overcoming a culture that puts products rather than people first.

This will involve "educating people to a true solidarity", where people are put back in the centre of our world, rather than techno-economic systems.

Francis used St Mother Teresa of Kolkata and the Parable of the Good Sanaritan to illustrate his point.

His third message is about what he calls a "revolution of tenderness".

Calling on the world's leaders to "act humbly", he said "The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly," he advises.

"You will end up hurting yourself and those around you, if you don't connect your power with humility and tenderness."

Francis's talk was kept as a surprise for those at the conference, who were only aware a "world figure" would be speaking to them.

Source

• NZ Herald
• Vatican Radio
• Mashable
• The Guardian
• Image: TED.com