In his weekly general audience, Pope Francis reveals what he said on his apostolic journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, praying that “the seeds of God's Kingdom of love, justice and peace may germinate.”

In a sense, the pope’s messages all amount to the same thing: Hello and God bless you. But there is a care in the language that is striking.

Pope Francis expressed his “spiritual closeness” and “solidarity” with those affected by a pair of powerful earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria Feb. 6.

Pope Francis hit out strongly against the way people have sought to manipulate Benedict’s death. “People who instrumentalize such a good person, [a man] of God, almost I would say a holy father of the church, have no ethics,” he said. “They are of a party, not of the church.”

Pope Francis repeated his pressing call for an end to the violence that has forced millions into camps for refugees or the internally displaced in South Sudan.

Pope Francis is on an ecumenical pilgrimage for reconciliation and peace with Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury; and Iain Greenshields, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

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.

Prior to 1964, no pope had left Italy for 150 years. The advent of the 747 and long-haul flights enabled popes to finally visit the world, and the world to visit the pope.

In 'A History of Catholic Theological Ethics,' James Keenan, S.J., offers intellectual history with flesh and bones and a soul.

“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.”