By Carol Glatz VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis met with a group of Israelis and their family members who were freed after being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian militants. The private meeting with 16 people, including two children, took place at the Vatican Nov. 14. A few members held posters […]
Pope Francis, the king of Spain, bishops, and politicians decried the devastation and loss of life in southeast Spain amid horrendous floods that left thousands of people homeless and city streets unrecognizable.
Two days after opening the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica to inaugurate the Holy Year 2025, Pope Francis will travel to a Rome prison to open a Holy Door as a “tangible sign of the message of hope” for people in prisons around the world, the Vatican announced.
Three years after he asked the world’s Catholics to walk together in faith on a synodal journey, Pope Francis said that the church cannot risk becoming “static” but must continue as a “missionary church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world.”
Pope Francis is getting a helping hand from the Diocese of Brooklyn and DeSales Media Group to get his message out to the faithful all over the world.
As the Holy Land marked a grim first anniversary Oct. 7 of the Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities and subsequent Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip, the papal almoner raised $35,000 in one afternoon from delegates to the Synod on Synodality and immediately sent it to Holy Family Parish in Gaza City.
Several of the new cardinal designates announced by Pope Francis have applauded the increased diversity of those getting a red hat, saying the appointments signal a shift in the center of Catholicism from the West to the global South.
Pope Francis announced he would create 21 new cardinals Dec. 8, including a 99-year-old former nuncio and the 44-year-old Ukrainian bishop who heads his church’s eparchy in Melbourne, Australia.
As fighting in the Middle East intensified and spread, Pope Francis turned to Mary, begging her to “intercede for our world in danger.”
With the war in Gaza morphing into a full-blown regional conflict as the first anniversary of hostilities approaches, the Church’s leading voice in the Holy Land has called on believers to observe an Oct. 7 day of prayer and fasting for peace.
