Catholic News Service

From Dec. 24, when the pope inaugurated the Holy Year, to Jan. 7, the Vatican said, 545,532 people from around the world have made the journey along the lengthy boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square and crossed through the basilica's Holy Door.

"May we learn to care for every child born of a woman, above all by protecting, like Mary, the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying."

In its annual report on pastoral workers killed, Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, listed eight priests and five laymen. Six were killed in Africa, five in Central or South America, and two were killed in Europe.

Marking the feast of the Holy Family Dec. 29, Francis reflected on the day's Gospel reading from St. Luke in which the 12-year-old Jesus goes missing from his parents and is found in the temple of Jerusalem.

After Pope Francis prayed on Christmas Day for Syrian Christians facing uncertainty amid the country's regime change, the leader of the Catholic Church in neighboring Iraq said the toppling of the regime left Christians in the region feeling "tense."

"I wanted the second Holy Door to be the one here, at a prison," Francis told the inmates. "I wanted all of us, inside or out, to have an opportunity to throw open the doors of our hearts and understand that hope does not disappoint."

Victor Genina Cervantes, director of integral human development at Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organization for national Catholic charities around the world, presented the campaign "Turn Debt into Hope" at a Vatican news conference Dec. 23, the eve of the opening of Holy Year 2025.

Israel's minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism asked Pope Francis to clarify his remarks about the need to investigate whether the current war in Gaza constitutes a genocide.

An Italian association for LGBTQ+ Christians, their parents and the priests and religious who minister with them is among the many groups registered to make a pilgrimage together through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.

Three months after the murder of Juan López, a Honduran church worker and environmental activist whose death was publicly mourned by Pope Francis, the bishops of Latin America are raising awareness of attacks against those fighting for social justice in the continent.

The Vatican City State court has returned guilty verdicts against the former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir, its former manager and his wife on charges of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds raised at concerts in Italy and abroad.

Climate change, war, immigration and other global challenges can only be resolved with the input and cooperation of the entire global community, Pope Francis told a group of new ambassadors to the Holy See.

At 53 years old, Capuchin Fr. Roberto Pasolini, the new preacher of the papal household, was among the youngest in the Vatican audience hall when he told Pope Francis and members of the Roman Curia: Be open to change.

The Vatican launched a "dashboard" for the College of Cardinals Dec. 5, allowing users of the web page to see a comprehensive list of the church's cardinals and sort them by age, rank, country of origin, electoral status and religious order. 

The celebration of a Holy Year every 25 years is an acknowledgment that "the Christian life is a journey calling for moments of greater intensity to encourage and sustain hope as the constant companion that guides our steps toward the goal of our encounter with the Lord Jesus," Pope Francis wrote.

Pope Francis received a new, emission-free, all-electric popemobile from representatives of Mercedes-Benz, the German car manufacturer that has been supplying vehicles for the popes for nearly 100 years.

Often homilies are so long, 20 or 30 minutes, that people will go outside to smoke a cigarette and come back, the pope said.

During two days of meetings, Pope Francis and his closest cardinal advisers discussed the relationship between local churches and other institutional church assemblies, a main topic of discussion to come out of the Synod of Bishops on synodality.

Pope Francis praised a new ceasefire reached in Lebanon, prayed for Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Gaza, and appealed to world leaders to help put an end to the war in Ukraine.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Legislative Texts are setting up a working group to study how "spiritual abuse" can be defined and punished in church law, a note from the doctrinal office said.