The migration crisis roiling the borderlands is literally in the backyard Bishop Seitz, the new chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ migration committee.

The bells tolled, the organ played, and the congregation of 50,000 Romans and pilgrims applauded warmly as pallbearers brought the casket of Pope Benedict XVI onto the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Pope Francis will preside at the requiem Mass and impart the final blessing before the burial of Benedict XVI at a solemn ceremony marked by simplicity in St. Peter’s Square on the morning of Jan. 5.

"The Virgin Mary is a great teacher of discernment,” Pope Francis said in his Wednesday general audience on Jan. 4, 2023.

“Benedict XVI did theology on his knees,” the pope wrote in the book’s introduction. “His explanation of the faith was carried out with the devotion of a man who has surrendered all of himself to God.”

Pope Francis’ agenda appears daunting even for a younger man, but, as he has said on more than one occasion, “one governs from the head, not from the knee.”