Catholic News Service

Indigenous people have a "fundamental role" in protecting the planet from "unprecedented" social and environmental threats, Pope Francis said during a meeting with participants from the Forum of Indigenous Peoples at the Vatican Feb. 10.

Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, the papal vicar for Vatican City State, has appointed Scalabrinian Fr. Luigi Sabbarese, a 60-year-old canon lawyer, to coordinate and verify the city state's safeguarding efforts.

Young people must be "missionaries of human dignity" to fight human trafficking and all forms of exploitation, Pope Francis said.

On the feast of Sudan-born St. Josephine Bakhita, Pope Francis prayed for "a future of justice and peace for our brothers and sisters in Africa."

Pope Francis urged all people to be in solidarity with the regions of Turkey and Syria struck by two powerful earthquakes early Feb. 6 and that are "in part already martyred by a long war."

Pope Francis expressed his "spiritual closeness" and "solidarity" with those affected by a pair of powerful earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria Feb. 6.

Ongoing flooding in South Sudan is causing people to move into regions traditionally populated by members of other ethnic groups. That leads to competition for land and resources that fuels ethnic tensions.

More than three-quarters of a century after the largest genocide in history, the United States and the Catholic Church are still making sense of their response to the Holocaust.

The principal task of the continental assemblies and the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops in 2023 and 2024 is to learn and strengthen a process of listening as a church to the Holy Spirit and not to address all the issues being debated in the church, top officers of the synod said.

Ukraine's religious leaders asked Pope Francis to visit Kyiv, said Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

The world's religious traditions and their followers are called to offer wisdom to the world and to "infuse it with a spirit of warmth, healing and fraternity," which requires the participation of women as well as men, Pope Francis said.

As war ravages Ukraine, the country cannot be divided among religious confessions but must be united behind "mother Ukraine," Pope Francis said.

God suffers and grieves when those who profess to believe in him do not love the people he loves and do not work for the justice he desires, Pope Francis said.

Germany's bishops do not have the authority to establish a permanent decision-making body of bishops and laypeople that top Vatican officials said would supersede the authority of the country's bishops' conference, according to a letter from the officials published Jan. 23.

The media and the field of communications need to exercise more kindness and share the truth with charity, Pope Francis said.

The Word of God, which heals and raises people up, is meant for everyone, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis did not need to launch listening sessions for the Synod of Bishops for people to discover there are tensions in the Catholic Church, said the cardinal serving as the synod's relator general.

The best way to fight a sense of fear about the future is to do good today, Pope Francis said.

Lengthy, abstract homilies are "a disaster," so preaching should be limited to 10 minutes, Pope Francis said.

While the Second Vatican Council gave the Catholic Church a "beautiful" document on the priesthood, "it did not face the fundamental question" of the difference between Catholic and Protestant understandings of ordained ministry, wrote Pope Benedict XVI in an essay published after his death.