This global gathering “is an event of the whole church,” said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

“The meeting is the message,” the pope said as he welcomed Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb.

It all began on Aug. 14, 1549, when St. Francis Xavier arrived and introduced Christianity.

Francis responded to questions relating to the separation of church and state, Islamophobia, pedophilia, synodality and reconciliation with the Lefebvrists.

The pope recalled that “our primordial vocation” is to be “children of God.”

An accord seems possible before the year’s end.

“It’s impossible to launder money at the I.O.R.” today, said the bank’s president.

John Paul II, who visited in 1997, said, “Lebanon is more than a country; it is a message.”

Francis' visit to a refugee camp was a message to Europe and the rest of us.

A young Syrian couple and their three young children, including a 2-month-old baby suffering from hydrocephalus and spina-bifida, are among 101 vulnerable refugees scheduled to take an Alitalia plane from Beirut to Rome in the early morning hours of May 3 to begin a new life in Italy.Mouhammad Amin