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ROME — Pope Francis received a group of some 30 “Palestinian and Ukrainian children” in the Vatican this weekend, the Vatican reported. The children came “predominantly from war zones,” mostly Palestine and Ukraine, and highlighted a new initiative of Pope Francis to engage children in the quest for peace, Vatican News said. Some of the children visiting the pope were missing limbs but were “happy for once to be in a place where they can marvel at a beautiful building rather than live in fear of bombs,” the Vatican related.

ROME — Pope Francis congratulated California governor Gavin Newsom for his refusal to carry out the death penalty and for California’s leadership in fighting climate change, the governor’s office reported. “I was struck by how he immediately brought up the issue of the death penalty and how proud he was of the work we’re doing in California,” Newsom said after a May 16 meeting with the pontiff in the Vatican. “I was struck by that because I wasn’t anticipating that, especially in the context of this convening.” Shortly after his inauguration in 2019, Newsom issued an executive order imposing a...

ROME — Pope Francis told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that conservatives are willfully blind and manifest a “suicidal attitude” in their narrowmindedness. In an interview set to air Sunday on 60 Minutes, the pope asserts that a conservative “is someone who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude.” “One thing is to take tradition into account and consider situations from the past but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box,” he adds. The Pope addresses his conservative critics in the church. “Conservative is one who clings to...

ROME, Italy — Climate change has brought the world to the “breaking point,” Pope Francis asserted in his introduction to a 3-day climate summit to be held in the Vatican in May. A firm believer in the climate “crisis,” the pontiff wrote that he has “heartfelt concerns” for “our suffering planet,” contending that “the world in which we live is collapsing” because of humanity’s failure to adequately address the crisis.

ROME — Pope Francis lamented the West’s continued demographic decline, insisting on Friday that fewer children signals a lack of hope in the future. Countering “outdated” myths of dangerous overpopulation, the pontiff contended that far from being a problem, human beings are the solution to the world’s difficulties. Without naming names, the pope seemingly referred to characters like Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who penned the 1968 doomsday bestseller The Population Bomb, which sparked hysteria over the future of the world and the earth’s ability to sustain human life.

New document in the Zanchetta case complicate the Church's case The Vatican was aware of the allegations against the ex-bishop before giving him a position, they say, and he is accused of abuse and commercial mismanagement with the Pope's "endorsement". Internal Church documents show that Church authorities, including Pope Francis, were aware of allegations of sexual abuse and economic mismanagement against the now ex-Bishop of Oran, Gustavo Zanchetta, before giving him a high position in the Vatican and transferring him to Rome.

ROME — Pope Francis commemorated Earth Day on Monday by warning that the planet is “falling into ruin” thanks to humanity’s failure to protect it. “Our generation has bequeathed many riches, but we have failed to protect the planet and we are not safeguarding peace,” the pontiff chided on X (former Twitter) “We are called to become artisans and caretakers of our common home, the Earth which is ‘falling into ruin,’” he declared, followed by “#EarthDay.”

ROME — Pope Francis received Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in a private audience Saturday, the Vatican Press Office reported. Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, said he deeply admires the pontiff’s efforts “to center humanity in public life — from addressing poverty and hunger, to fighting the climate crisis, to promoting peace.”

Pope Francis’ favorability rating has been dropping constantly among U.S. Catholics over the past 10 years, according to an April Pew Research Center poll. From 2015 to 2021, the pope’s favorability rating dropped by 7 percentage points, from 90 percent to 83 percent, Pew found. More telling still, perhaps, is that in the last 3 years his favorability rating has declined by 8 more percentage points, to a record low of 75 percent. Practicing Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week are the least supportive of him, giving him a favorability rating of just 71 percent. A mere...

ROME — Pope Francis will visit Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, in September, the Vatican has announced. According to Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, the Vatican sent a letter to the Indonesian government confirming that Pope Francis will be present in Indonesia on Sept. 3, 2024. On Wednesday, Indonesian Secretary of State Pratikno said that the Foreign Ministry is working out details for a bilateral meeting between President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Pope Francis to be held when the 87-year-old pontiff visits the country in September.

The 87-year-old pontiff led Easter Mass at the Vatican in front of thousands, despite concerns over his health. Referring to conflicts around the world, the Pope pleaded not to "yield to the logic of weapons and rearming". "Peace is never made with arms, but with outstretched hands and open hearts," he said. Tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in St Peter's Square to hear the Pope.

ROME — Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 women inmates at a Roman prison Thursday evening, the first time any pope included no men in the Holy Thursday ritual. The Church’s practice of washing the feet of 12 people is intended as a commemoration of the moment at the Last Supper when Jesus washed the feet of the 12 apostles before commissioning them as priests to celebrate the Eucharist, according to Catholic belief.

Can a Civil Engineer weigh in on this?

ROME — Pope Francis wrote a letter to a group of mostly South American migrants Thursday, calling them “the suffering flesh of Christ.” The pontiff told the 3,000 migrants gathered at Lajas Blancas in Panama en route to the United States that he would like to be there with them personally but instead was represented by a group of bishops from Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia as well as Catholic pastoral workers. The migrants arrive in Lajas Blancas after crossing the Darien Gap, a dense tropical forest covering over 1,400,000 acres along the border between Panama and Colombia and one...

The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera” releases several passages from Pope Francis’ autobiographical book entitled "Life. My Story in History," written with Vatican journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona, set to be released on March 19 by HarperCollins. In the passages released on Thursday, the Pope clarified that were he to resign, he would not choose to be called “Pope Emeritus” but simply “Bishop Emeritus of Rome." In that case, he would live in the Basilica of St. Mary Major “to return to being a confessor and bring communion to the sick.” The Pope clarified this possible scenario in case of his...

ROME — The Vatican Press Office said Saturday evening the pope’s call for Ukraine to raise the “white flag” did not refer to surrender but rather the “courage to negotiate.” “I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said during a recent interview with Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), a portion of which was published Saturday morning. The pontiff’s words were widely understood to refer to Ukraine’s surrender, drawing a fierce reaction from Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

ROME — Pope Francis has blamed Mongolia’s current cold spell on global warming, insisting the overheating environment is a “global social problem.” Following his weekly Angelus address Sunday, the pontiff said he is close to the population of Mongolia, “affected by a wave of intense cold, which is causing serious humanitarian consequences.” This extreme phenomenon, which has occasioned the death of over 600,000 livestock, is “a sign of climate change and its effects,” the pope told the estimated 20,000 gathered in Saint Peter’s Square.

ROME — Pope Francis has written to his “Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel,” exhorting them to break the “incessant cycles” of war and hatred in the Holy Land. Since October 7 the Holy Land “has been cast into a spiral of unprecedented violence,” the pontiff writes. “My heart is torn at the sight of what is happening in the Holy Land, by the power of so much division and so much hatred.” In his letter, the pope laments the manifestations of “anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism” that have emerged during the conflict, underscoring the “particular and singular” relationship binding Jews to...

ROME — Pope Francis received Italian American director Martin Scorsese for a private meeting in the Vatican on Wednesday. Scorsese, who directed the controversial 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ and is currently working on a movie of the life of Jesus, has said that when he thinks of Pope Francis, he thinks of “compassion.” n Wednesday’s meeting, the 81-year-old director presented Pope Francis with a book chronicling the making of his Oscar-nominated film Killers of the Flower Moon. Papal confidant Father Antonio Spadaro, a harsh critic of American Christians, gushed effusively over the meeting, insisting that it formed...

ROME — Pope Francis warned of the dangers of “Big Data” Wednesday, noting “algorithms are not neutral” and can be used to spread fake news and create groupthink. Artificial intelligence systems can “be a source of ‘cognitive pollution,’ a distortion of reality by partially or completely false narratives, believed and broadcast as if they were true,” the pontiff argues in his 2024 Message for the World Day of Social Communications. The digital revolution can imprison people “in models that nowadays are called ‘echo chambers,’” the pope states, and rather than increasing a “pluralism of information,” they create confusion.