Carol Glatz

Mental health, discrimination against minorities, including LGBTQ+ people, and a desire to be included more in church life were some of the concerns young college students shared with Pope Francis on a Zoom conference call.

The pope's remarks came during an audience at the Vatican June 20 with cosmologists, theoretical physicists, astronomers and other experts who were attending a June 16-21 conference organized by the Vatican Observatory and dedicated to the latest questions, theories and research being done regarding black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities.

There is a prayer for every state of mind and spiritual need in the Book of Psalms, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis and his international Council of Cardinals continued their discussions about the role of women in the church, listening to women experts and discussing the possibilities according to canon law.

The group included 25 CEOs who are part of the Sustainable Markets Initiative. Established in 2020 by King Charles III, the initiative brings together leaders from different sectors to commit to concrete action that supports sustainable economic growth and caring for the environment.

The poor bear the image of Jesus, and Christians must offer them support and expressions of Christian charity, Pope Francis said.

During a closed-door meeting June 11 with about 160 priests from the Diocese of Rome at the Pontifical Salesian University, the pope said it would not be prudent to admit young men with homosexual tendencies to seminaries as candidates for the priesthood, according to the Italian news agencies.

"The church begins to take shape in the community, seeking together, listening to the word of God, speaking well of each other," Pope Francis told about 60 residents of a Rome apartment building: children, teenagers, adults and older people. 

Pope Francis announced that he is preparing a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus to "illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal, but also to say something significant to a world that seems to have lost its heart."

"It is an occasion charged with salvation because Jesus is present in the sister or brother in need of our help. In this sense, the poor save us, because they enable us to encounter the face of the Lord," the pope wrote in his message for the celebration Sept. 29 of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

The Italian bishops' conference will "soon" begin a pilot program to research cases of alleged abuse against minors that were reported to diocesan authorities between 2001 and 2021, said the new president of the conference's commission for the protection of minors.

Always pray, and pray especially for an end to all wars, Pope Francis told children during Mass concluding the first World Children's Day.

Pope Francis formally recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old Italian teenager whose birth in 1991 will make him the first "millennial" to become a saint.

The Vatican-Vietnam joint working group held its first meeting since last year's important agreement allowing for a papal representative to reside in Vietnam and the establishment of an office there to support Vietnam's estimated 6.5 million Catholics.

Pope Francis signed a letter on synodality in the presence of parish priests and urged them to be "missionaries of synodality," said several of the priests present.

"Here, then, is the great enemy of faith: it is not intelligence, it is not reason, as, alas, some continue obsessively to repeat," Francis said. The enemy is "simply fear."

The Vatican Secretariat of State sent a formal statement to the French Embassy to the Holy See reaffirming that Pope Francis had sent a top Vatican official to investigate a French religious congregation and warning that interference by a French civil court in an internal church matter could be a "serious violation" of religious freedom.

Pope Francis expressed his closeness to and solidarity with all those affected by a deadly earthquake in Taiwan.

Governments must eliminate laws discriminating against women and help guarantee women's human rights, Pope Francis said.