Dispatches

Several groups said the presentation of the family in the first part of the synod’s working document is too negative, too bleak, because it “mainly highlights problems.”

This morning Pope Francis urgently appealed to the International Community “to broaden its horizons beyond the immediate interests and use the instruments of international law and diplomacy to resolve the ongoing conflicts.”

The 318 participants attending the synod of bishops on the family have raised or discussed a wide range of topics during the first four days of this gathering nbsp High among them are the terrible destructive impact that war armed conflict poverty unemployment persecution violence against wo

A small central Illinois community reflects big challenges for the pope

Here is the danger: that assisted suicide becomes the cheap alternative to health care.

The Hungarian cardinal, Peter Erdo, is playing a crucial role in the synod on the family, and now a somewhat controversial one.

Rather than the stage on which our story is unfolding, the universe becomes the crux of the story, and we just a part.

A church that is able to recover the interest of the young, “to demonstrate to them the possibility to live a life centered in the encounter with Jesus Christ…an encounter which gives meaning to life,” will be the church that can liberate the world’s young people “from the slavery of the present and invite them to be open to the future.”

Pope Francis enraptured both big and small crowds, leaving them both laughing and crying, be they the U.S. Congress or the tens of thousands that saw him in Philadelphia. Through it all, the pope seemed to just be himself, at least the self that we have become accustomed to seeing.