Perhaps illustrating part of the logic for a new “ministerial” on religious freedom, meaning a gathering of government representatives at the minister’s level to be hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich says it’s critical that China be pressured to clean up its act.

President Donald Trump’s decision to build an anti-immigrant wall will leave the United States alone and a “prisoner” of its own isolation, according to Pope Francis in his latest wide-ranging interview, this time with a Spanish journalist.

The life of a young person and the vocation to which God calls each one is “holy ground” that pastors and parents must respect, nurture and encourage, Pope Francis wrote in a new apostolic exhortation.

In a major new document on young people, Pope Francis acknowledges the clerical sexual abuse crisis as a major challenge to the Catholic Church’s credibility, but, following the lead of a summit of bishops last fall upon which it’s based, notably omits any reference to a “zero tolerance” policy.

In what’s rapidly becoming the new papal normal, on the first day of his visit to Morocco, Pope Francis once again surprised friends and foes alike by signing an appeal that wasn’t on his schedule, this time on Jerusalem – calling for the city to be preserved as a “patrimony of humanity,” where followers of the three monotheistic religions are free to worship.

Speaking to a small community of priests, religious and the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Morocco, Pope Francis Sunday said that consecrated people are not called to “govern” the people entrusted to them but to “love” them.