The pope “joins you in asking the Lord to bestow upon everyone the spiritual strength which triumphs over violence and overcomes evil with good,” said the message released Nov. 23.

You can cherish life and surrender it when you know that it is never insignificant, that your story matters, that you exist to love the author of our tale.

We experience the death of others—but not as they do. We only know that they are gone, and that fact alone is nigh impossible to comprehend.

Benedict’s longing for heaven, recently hinted at in a letter of condolence, is not to be interpreted as meaning that the former pope “no longer has any desire to live.”

Retired Pope Benedict XVI has said he hopes to soon join a beloved professor friend in “the afterlife,” in a sign that the 94-year-old pontiff is not only accepting his eventual death but welcoming it.

If the baby was born alive and they waited for the priest to make it over to the hospital, they ran the risk that the baby might die before the priest arrived to perform the sacrament of baptism.