The prayer of Father Sam Wilson is that more of his brother Jesuits will answer the call to serve in assignments on the peripheries like southern Belize. “It’s where we should be,” he says.

When gang members were asked about what they must do to exit the gang, a little over half said they must join a church or follow God.

The portrait of Pope Francis that emerges from conversations with his friends is that of a man as resolutely down-to-earth and dependably Argentinian as his immigrant neighborhood.

While the United States and Europe have quickly elevated Vladimir Putin to the role of primary wrongdoer, many leading Catholic theorists in Latin America are not willing to promote a simple vilification of the Russian side.

The Vatican on Saturday expressed “surprise and pain” at Nicaragua's expulsion of the papal nuncio, which comes at a time of growing pressure on opposition figures in the Central American nation.

“It is clericalism that prevents the church today from being missionary,” Bishop Cipollini said. “I have great hope that the synod on synodality can make clericalism collapse—perhaps not entirely, but at least in its major strongholds.”