Cindy Wooden

As the continental assemblies for the Synod of Bishops make clear that hot-button issues — like sexuality, climate change and the role of women in the church — are not going away, the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life is pointing at a more fundamental issue at stake in learning to be a "synodal church": What responsibility comes from baptism and unites all Catholics?

Pope Francis told Jesuits working in Congo that he had taken seriously the promise he and all Jesuits make to not seek offices of authority and power in the church and, in fact, he twice declined becoming a bishop.

On the feast of Sudan-born St. Josephine Bakhita, Pope Francis prayed for "a future of justice and peace for our brothers and sisters in Africa."

The world's religious traditions and their followers are called to offer wisdom to the world and to "infuse it with a spirit of warmth, healing and fraternity," which requires the participation of women as well as men, Pope Francis said.

God suffers and grieves when those who profess to believe in him do not love the people he loves and do not work for the justice he desires, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis did not need to launch listening sessions for the Synod of Bishops for people to discover there are tensions in the Catholic Church, said the cardinal serving as the synod's relator general.

The best way to fight a sense of fear about the future is to do good today, Pope Francis said.

While the Second Vatican Council gave the Catholic Church a "beautiful" document on the priesthood, "it did not face the fundamental question" of the difference between Catholic and Protestant understandings of ordained ministry, wrote Pope Benedict XVI in an essay published after his death.

The call to faith in Jesus always is a call to service and mission, Pope Francis told seminarians, priests and staff of the Pontifical North American College.

Encouraging Catholics to participate in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Pope Francis also announced that before the assembly of the Synod of Bishops opens in early October, there will be an ecumenical prayer vigil in St. Peter's Square.

Telling parents and godparents to teach their little ones to pray from the time they are small, Pope Francis baptized 13 babies in the Sistine Chapel as their older brothers and sisters looked on — or got away and ran around.

Soon after Pope Benedict XVI was laid to rest in the crypt of St. Peter's Basilica, an Italian publisher released early copies of a book by the late pope's secretary.

"Protocol develops over time, and this has never happened before," the director of the Vatican press office kept repeating in the days after the death of retired Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis will soon pack his bags for his first foreign trip of 2023, a year that promises to be as busy as ever.

The birth of Jesus in a stable "shows us God's 'style,' which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness," Pope Francis told visitors and pilgrims at his weekly general audience.

The most important question a Christian can ask when making any decision in life is "where the greatest love is to be found," Pope Francis wrote in a letter marking the 400th anniversary of St. Francis de Sales, a doctor of the church.

The day after Christmas the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, which emphasizes how the story of Jesus' birth is not a "fairy tale," but a call to live as witnesses of the Gospel, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis said he wrote a resignation letter in 2013, his first year in office, to be used in case he became physically or mentally impaired and unable to fulfill the duties of the papacy.

The interconnected "moral, social, political and economic crises" facing the world cannot be solved if individuals and nations continue to focus only on their own, immediate interests, Pope Francis said in his message for World Peace Day 2023.

The Vatican has had diplomatic contact with Russia regarding comments Pope Francis made about Russian minorities being responsible for the worst acts of cruelty in the country's war on Ukraine.