In addition to the critique of Cardinal McElroy’s focus on welcome and inclusion, critics are also reacting to the process through which that could happen: the ongoing synod of bishops.

“Our sexual lives have many areas of sinfulness and I’m not challenging that,” Cardinal McElroy says this week on the Jesuitical podcast. “All I’m saying is that in the Christian moral life, they don’t automatically represent mortal sin.”

“As I heard the chant ‘Cardinal Pell should go to Hell,’ I thought, ‘Ah ha! At least they now believe in the afterlife!’ Perhaps this is St. George Pell’s first miracle,” former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.

Toussaint Kafarhire Murhula, S.J., a priest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, describes the joy of Congolese people at the pope's visit and his hopes for what the pope's journey might bring.

The pope and Cardinal McElroy both made statements this week on L.G.B.T. issues, which have until recently not been discussed by church officials.

We must examine the contradictions in a church of inclusion and shared belonging that have been identified by the voices of the people of God in our nation and discern in synodality a pathway for moving beyond them.

In 2021 the Vatican launched a unique global theology project: Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries. What can we learn from those interviewed?

Maria McFadden Maffucci is the editor-in-chief of the Human Life Review, a quarterly journal founded by her father in 1975 after the Roe vs. Wade decision.

In the wake of the death of pope emeritus Benedict XVI earlier today, U.S. Catholics offered public condolences and prayers.

Senior editor Robert David Sullivan charts America magazine’s year in review, month by month.