Pope Francis wrote that “it is beautiful” when a penitent, reciting the Act of Contrition, recognizes that God is “all good and deserving of all my love.”

Leading up to International Women’s Day, Catholic women convened near the Vatican and online, advocating for female leadership within the Catholic Church, pushing for equality, visibility and institutional openness to change.

A letter criticizing Pope Francis for promoting “ambiguities in matters of faith” and at the same time ruling the Catholic Church with an iron fist, is circulating in the Vatican.

The gifts of men and women are “fruitful” together, and to erase the difference between men and women “is to erase humanity,” Pope Francis said.

Amid all the wrestling with theology we do, maybe our job is also to notice what is being done to us. To behold the way God uses vexing things like conflict in the church to work on us, to purify us. 

Five years after Pope Francis convened a global summit on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, two previously anonymous alleged victims of Father Marko Rupnik decided to go public and tell of the abuses they allege to have suffered at the hands of the prolific priest-artist.