“That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t go to live in the papal apartment, because the popes before me were saints and I couldn’t do it—I’m not so much a saint,” the pope said on Feb. 6 during a primetime Italian talk show.
Akash Bashir, a 20-year-old volunteer security guard who was killed by a suicide bomber in 2015, is the first Pakistani to be given the title “servant of God,” an initial step on the path to sainthood.
“For some priests, it would be better if they were married—not just for sexual reasons, but because it would be better for their life and they wouldn’t be lonely,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx said in a newspaper interview.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich said it was time for a fundamental revision of church teaching, and the way Pope Francis had spoken about homosexuality in the past could lead to a change in doctrine.
Italy’s Catholic military chaplain has pushed back strongly against calls by a former Vatican ambassador to resist Covid-19 vaccine mandates, saying the ambassador’s “conspiracy theories” were a source of confusion and disinformation.
As soon as he finished his prayer, Pope Francis told the people in the hall that the man had a problem: “I don’t know if it is physical, psychological or spiritual, but he is our brother with a problem. I would like to finish by praying for him.”