This week on “Inside the Vatican,” America’s Rome correspondent Gerard O’Connell reveals that the document was drafted by a much smaller group of people than would ordinarily be involved in writing this type of statement and that Pope Francis reviewed it just before his Iraq trip.

Lent is when we sit down in a loud and confusing world and try to figure out what we’re doing here. That is all the more important for the people who are most confused.

Despite public tension between some bishops and Joe Biden, Melissa Rogers, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is confident the administration will be able to work closely with the bishops.

L.G.B.T. Catholics and their allies are reacting with dismay to a statement released Monday by the Vatican prohibiting priests from blessing same-sex unions, in which church officials assert that God “does not and cannot bless sin.”

The pope in late February accepted the resignation of Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who had reached the normal retirement age of 75 last June. The cardinal had been prefect since 2014.

The Vatican has issued a statement in which it declares that “the church does not have, and cannot have, the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.” It said Pope Francis “was informed and gave his assent” to its publication.