News from the Vatican

CHINA CATHOLIC CHURCH The Chinese national flag is pictured in a file photo in front of a Catholic church in the village of Huangtugang. (CNS photo/Thomas Peter, Reuters)

"As soon as circumstances permit, however, it is necessary and urgent to return to the normality of Christian life, which has the church building as its home and the celebration of the liturgy, especially the Eucharist," wrote Cardinal Robert Sarah.

"When we lose a dad or mom, we are orphans," and when a husband or wife loses a spouse, they are a widower or widow, but if someone loses a child, "What am I?" there is no word to describe that condition, he said.

As protests rage around the world - Hong Kong, Belarus, the Unites States - Pope urges non-violence and respect of civil rights

European countries can turn the migration crisis into a "window" of opportunity, dialogue and encounter between migrants and their citizens, Pope Francis said.

Christ's cross is a powerful symbol of God's love for humanity and not just a decoration or trinket, Pope Francis said.

At the General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis says it is “time to improve our social love.”

During his weekly general audience Sept. 9, the pope said that "we see partisan interests emerging" in the search for a vaccine, and some people "are taking advantage of the situation to instigate divisions: by seeking economic or political advantages, generating or exacerbating conflicts."

Gossip is "a plague worse than COVID," Pope Francis said, asserting that while speaking ill of others comes almost naturally, it is a tool of the devil to divide the church.

The new encyclical is on the social, political and economic obligations that flow from a belief that all people are children of God and therefore brothers and sisters to one another.

"As a general concept, economics should become "the expression of a care and concern that does not exclude but seeks to include, that does not demean but seeks to uplift and give life," the pope

Pope Francis wrote that one of the virtues of the synod is precisely that it encourages "bishops to set aside a majority-wins attitude and "learn to listen, in community, to what the Spirit is saying to the church."

Stefano Fantoni, a well known physicist and nuclear astrophysicist, poses with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, Sept. 2, 2020, at the EuroScience Open Forum in Trieste, Italy.

Pope Francis expresses his and the Church’s solidarity with the troubled nation and calls for a worldwide day of prayer on Friday, 4 September.

The Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples has cleared doubts about the postponement of the annual Church observance

Cardinal Parolin noted that in solemnly opening the Second Vatican Council, St. John XXIII said its purpose was "to transmit Catholic doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion," but to do so in a way that demonstrates how it responds to the needs and questions of modern men and women.