Pope Francis celebrated Mass Tuesday for Sweden's tiny Catholic community, made up of many refugees and migrants, praising as "blessed" those in this overwhelmingly nonreligious nation who take in asylum-seekers.

After the historic interreligious ceremony Monday, Francis turned his attention to largely secular Sweden's record of accepting tens of thousands of asylum-seekers last year, in contrast to many other European nations.

In a football stadium packed with some 15,000 spectators, Francis weaved his homily around Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," which lists the Beatitudes, but added a few modern twists.

Sweden took in 163,000 asylum-seekers last year, more than any other European Union state relative to population.

With about 17 percent of Swedes now foreign-born, multiculturalism has challenged Sweden's comfortable secular identity.

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