VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In a letter to his nuncio in Russia, Pope Francis called out those who would claim Russia’s war on Ukraine had any spiritual justification. Saying he wanted to speak on behalf of the war’s victims, Pope Francis said that “their cry rises to God, invoking peace instead of war, dialogue instead…
AJACCIO, France (CNS) — As Pope Francis became the first pope to celebrate Mass on the French island of Corsica Dec. 15, the usual excitement of an open-air Mass with the pope was combined with the flair and pageantry of a Renaissance fair. Throngs of Corsicans, dressed in medieval outfits and carrying banners depicting Marian…
ROME (CNS) — Making his customary visit to the Rome Basilica of St. Mary Major to pray before his trip to the French island of Corsica, Pope Francis also met and prayed with dozens of actors staging a living Nativity scene. For the third year in a row, the basilica and an Italian association that…
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Courageous trust in God, oneself and others is needed to see the good in one’s life and to be able to embrace a difficult and imperfect world, said the preacher of the papal household. It is a matter of “adjusting our heart, happy to believe that reality, just as it is,…
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Reducing the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to anything other than an expression of Mary’s universal motherhood diminishes the true essence of the iconic Marian devotion, Pope Francis said. “The mystery of Guadalupe is to venerate her and to hear in our ears: ‘Am I not here, I who am…
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis has called on all nations to eliminate the death penalty, to divert a fixed percentage of arms spending to a global fund to fight hunger and climate change, and to cancel the international debt of developing nations as concrete ways to usher in a new era of hope. “Sporadic…