In “a note of accompaniment” to the final document, the pope made clear that Catholic bishops throughout the world are to lead their churches in building a synodal and missionary church in the 21st century.

“What I’d like to see is the breaking down of this notion that there are the professional Christians—who are the priests, the bishops, the religious and many lay people—and the recognition that we’re all part of this together.”

“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”

For Pope Francis, Matteo Ricci is not so much a figure of the past but rather “a prophetic figure” who nourishes the hope of encounter today—in China and around the world.

The cause for the canonization of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., 28th superior general of the Society of Jesus, took an important step forward today, Nov. 14, with the closing of its diocesan phase.

In an exclusive interview with Gerard O’Connell, Cardinal Cupich says young Catholics will look back at the synod as “one of the most historic moments in their lives, for it has redirected the focus of where the church is going.”

History was made on Nov. 5, when Francis, the first Jesuit pope, visited the Gregorian University, the oldest and largest pontifical university in Rome, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1551.

“We wish him much wisdom,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said about Donald J. Trump, the day after he was elected as the 47th president of the United States of America.

Cardinal McElroy shared his reflections on the synod with America Vatican correspondent Gerard O'Connell in this wide-ranging interview at the North American College in Rome.

In his fourth encyclical, “Dilexit Nos,” Pope Francis calls on believers to rediscover devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and, through it, to love our brothers and sisters in the church and world.