SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Pope Francis has blessed and consoled a group of women who were used as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II.

Francis greeted each of the seven women, most in wheelchairs, at the front of Seoul's main cathedral Monday at the start of his final Mass for peace and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula.

He was given a pin from one of them which he immediately pinned to his vestments and wore throughout the Mass.

In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the encounter, Lee Yong-soo, 86, said she hoped the meeting would provide some solace for the pain she and the other "comfort women" still feel more than seven decades after they were forced into sexual slavery.