While May 24 has been celebrated with prayer for and with the church in China every year since 2008, Francis’ message on Sunday comes at the end of a week in which a number of troubling news reports reached the Vatican.

Pope Francis identified three suggestions that are typical of the Holy Spirit: Live in the present. Look to the whole. Put God before yourself.

The pope‘s aim is to involve the whole church at diocesan, national and continental levels through a process of “listening and discernment” on the important theme of synodality.

St. Ignatius ”was a reformer and a better reformer than Luther,” Father Sosa says in this interview with America for the start of the Ignatian Year, because he “obtained reforms without causing division.”

The diocese has been without a bishop since Jan. 3, 2019, when Bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung died after leading the diocese for just 17 months.

Pope Francis brought consolation and hope to Catholics and countless people of other religions in Myanmar when he celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica this Sunday morning for peace in their troubled homeland, which was robbed of democracy by a military coup on Feb. 1.

Pope Francis today expressed his “very great concern” at the armed clashes in Gaza and Israel and made an urgent, passionate appeal “to those with the responsibility” to bring a ceasefire and “to walk the path of peace.”

As the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry met privately with Pope Francis on May 15 to discuss climate initiatives and other issues.

Cardinal Bo expressed his immense joy, and that of the 750,000 Catholics in this majority-Buddhist country of 52 million people, that Pope Francis has decided to celebrate Mass for peace in Myanmar on Sunday, May 16, in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The lay ministry of catechist, the pope said, gives recognition to “those lay men and women who feel called by virtue of their baptism to cooperate in the work of catechesis.”