For more than 25 years, the U.S. Catholic Church has been dealing with the horror of widespread clergy sex crimes and cover-ups. Yet U.S. abuse survivors have never received official acknowledgment of their pain by any federal official.

The pope encouraged all government efforts for helping families’ real needs, saying, “if families are not the focus of the present, there will be no future.”

This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle and veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell examine how binding the Vatican's letter and the U.S. bishops’ agreements are, along with what decisions the bishops now face.

It’s the second time Francis and Fernandez have met and added yet another wrinkle in the Argentine pope’s sometimes strained relationship with the governments of his native country.

There was an inevitability to the newsflash: Sooner or later, someone was going to shoot Pope John Paul II.

I had never been more convinced of humanity’s potential for greatness than when I saw the freshly opened eyes of the smallest patient ever in my care.

Christian prayer, like all Christian life, is not a “walk in the park.”

A more welcoming society for babies, children and families must work on many levels. Catholics should be leading that charge.

The lay ministry of catechist, the pope said, gives recognition to “those lay men and women who feel called by virtue of their baptism to cooperate in the work of catechesis.”

Even in the exceedingly unlikely event that every bishop miraculously agreed on how to approach the question of Communion and abortion, it still would not resolve the political question of abortion in favor of the Catholic position.