Pope Francis reassured the synod fathers that the Catholic doctrine on marriage had not been put into question at the Extraordinary Synod in 2014 and so retains its full validity.

The Hungarian cardinal, Peter Erdo, is playing a crucial role in the synod on the family, and now a somewhat controversial one.

Francis says synod is not a 'talk shop' or conference but 'a protected space where the church experiences that action of the Holy Spirit.'

Pope Francis analyzed the real and often dramatic situation of people in today’s globalized world, marked by “a growing loneliness and vulnerability,” the image of which is “the family.”

Pope Francis will open the synod tomorrow morning, Oct. 4, with a concelebrated mass in St Peter’s Basilica attended by 270 synod fathers from all continents.

The Vatican has denounced as ldquo very serious and irresponsible rdquo the decision by Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith CDF to announce publicly on the eve of the synod of bishops on the family that he is homosexual and has a partner

Minutes after arriving in Cuba on Sept. 19, Pope Francis hailed “the process of normalizing relations between the two peoples of Cuba and the United States” after more than 50 years of estrangement as “a sign of the victory of the culture of encounter and dialogue” that

Some 250 bishops from all over the world will gather in synod in the Vatican from Oct. 4 to 25 for what many consider to be the most important assembly of this kind since the Second Vatican Council. They gather exactly 50 years after that council to focus on the family and, in the words of Pope Fran

The crackdown against Christianity has taken various forms.

This week-long journey takes him first to Cuba and then to the United States and is widely considered “the big one” of the year.