Pope Francis hit out strongly against the way people have sought to manipulate Benedict’s death. “People who instrumentalize such a good person, [a man] of God, almost I would say a holy father of the church, have no ethics,” he said. “They are of a party, not of the church.”

Pope Francis repeated his pressing call for an end to the violence that has forced millions into camps for refugees or the internally displaced in South Sudan.

Pope Francis is on an ecumenical pilgrimage for reconciliation and peace with Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury; and Iain Greenshields, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

In addition to the critique of Cardinal McElroy’s focus on welcome and inclusion, critics are also reacting to the process through which that could happen: the ongoing synod of bishops.

Prior to 1964, no pope had left Italy for 150 years. The advent of the 747 and long-haul flights enabled popes to finally visit the world, and the world to visit the pope.

In 'A History of Catholic Theological Ethics,' James Keenan, S.J., offers intellectual history with flesh and bones and a soul.

“Our sexual lives have many areas of sinfulness and I’m not challenging that,” Cardinal McElroy says this week on the Jesuitical podcast. “All I’m saying is that in the Christian moral life, they don’t automatically represent mortal sin.”

In the D.R.C., Pope Francis has shown his advanced age and physical mobility problems have not limited his extraordinary capacity to console the afflicted, call evildoers to conversion and sustain the faithful in hope.

The contemporary tension in South Sudan has a complex and disturbing history.

“As I heard the chant ‘Cardinal Pell should go to Hell,’ I thought, ‘Ah ha! At least they now believe in the afterlife!’ Perhaps this is St. George Pell’s first miracle,” former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.