On Tuesday, a gunman opened fire at Europe’s largest Christmas market in Strasbourg, France — leaving two individuals dead, another in a vegetative state, and wounding over a dozen others.

A gunman opened fire inside a Brazilian church, killing four people and injuring four others before turning the gun on himself, police said.

A nun in India accusing a bishop of raping her says she wants “the Church to recognise that I was wronged.”

For most people, Christmas is a joyous time with family and friends; but this joy can turn to grief when those family and friends have died.

In the heart of Rome, near streets of fancy shops already blinged out for Christmas shopping, Pope Francis prayed for Romans struggling to survive and for families in the city and around the world who face the same lack of welcome that Mary and Joseph experienced.

Albrecht von Boeselager, Grand Chancellor of the Order of Malta, has said Europe cannot ignore its high number of migrant deaths, and stressed the importance of seeking a multilateral solution as nations prepare to adopt the U.N. global compact on migration in Morocco.

Workers decorate the Christmas tree in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Nov. 26.

On Monday Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Pope Francis at the Vatican for a wide-ranging discussion that hit on major topics such as Christian persecution, the status of Jerusalem and a two-state solution for the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

An international group of Catholics has spent the last decade developing new leaders in war-torn South Sudan, but its members have paid a heavy price for their accompaniment of that country’s suffering people.