This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J.—standing in for Colleen Dulle —and Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell survey the pope’s plans for the new year.

A charismatic demagogue with millions of devoted followers. New media with little government regulation. The threat of violence in the streets. No, we’re not talking about the 45th president.

“My hope for L.G.B.T. Catholics is that they all feel welcome and comfortable in any parish in the world,” Sister Gramick says. “That they might feel just as much a part of the church as anyone else.”

In a handwritten letter, Pope Francis congratulated Sister Gramick on “50 years of closeness, of compassion and of tenderness” in a ministry that he described as being in “the style of God.”

The “Faith Manifesto,” signed by around 6,000 people, sharply criticizes the demands of the Synodal Path, which amount to a “self-secularization of the church,” Bernhard Meuser said.

“Sometimes we live in a spirit of a ‘parking lot’; we stay parked, without the impulse of desire that carries us forward. We do well to ask: where are we on our journey of faith?”