The centuries-old silver fir tree that had been destined to become the centerpiece Christmas decoration in St. Peter’s Square will now live, perhaps to see another century.

"A society that erases women from public life is a society that becomes impoverished," he said.

Commitments to protect tolerance and religious freedom need to be put into practice constantly so that these rights may be fully experienced, Pope Francis said.

On the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Vatican hosted the global premiere of a documentary on the need to address climate change using ideas from Laudato Si'.

Pope Francis urged athletes in many sports to fight against a throwaway culture that “treats men and women as products, to be used and then discarded.”

The pope will travel to Bahrain, a small majority-Muslim country in the Persian Gulf region. Pope Francis will be the first pope to visit the region.

“You can leave a mark,” Pope Francis told members of the global network; just make sure that “your mark is positive and moves toward integral human development.”

“I asked her, ‘Auntie, you’re not leaving?’ and, after a moment of silence, she answered ‘I don’t know, I want to wait,” Comboni Sister Gabriella Bottani said of her aunt, Comboni Sister Maria De Coppi.

“Today, in a special way, six months since the start of the war, let us think of Ukraine and Russia, two countries I consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.... We need peace.”

Canon lawyers are proposing new laws that will delineate the rules on papal retirement. Retired Pope Benedict XVI has had to trailblaze a path, as the last pope to step down was in 1294.