In a highly significant move, Francis “officially” presents the synod’s final document, which includes the synod’s hot-button issues, to the Catholic Church worldwide.

ProPublica is advancing the painfully slow disclosure of the names of sexual abusers, writes Kathleen McChesney, who headed the U.S. bishops’ Office of Child and Youth Protection.

The German bishops are due to hold their next regularly scheduled elections at the spring full assembly in early March in Mainz.

Pope Francis warned the bishops that many in the media and the general public will be focusing on those two issues -- married priests and women deacons -- while he wanted to focus on the social, pastoral, ecological and cultural challenges facing the Amazon region.

Bishop McElroy added, "There is no mandate in universal Catholic social teaching that gives a categorical priority to either of these issues as uniquely determinative of the common good."

I have stopped praying for years at a time. I started praying again not because I think God wants me to but because prayer turns me into one kind of person and no prayer turns me into a different kind of person.