This is Francis’ second visit to Japan. He came here in October 1987 to visit Jesuit missionaries as provincial. 

The accusations of paganism and idolatry at the Synod on the Amazon sent a troubling message about the universality of the church, writes Mary McAuliffe, a teacher at a Jesuit school in the Pacific.

AP: Clergy sex abuse has cost more than $4 billion and implicated at least 5,100 priests by the church’s own count since 2002.

“The seminary is not a den of sexual misconduct fueled by excessive drinking,” the report on the investigation says.

Sivori, a 77-year-old member of the Salesian order, is an assistant principal at a Salesian school in Udon Thani, in northeast Thailand.

The pope reminded priests, religious and seminarians that the fervor of evangelization “is nurtured by a double encounter: with the face of the Lord and with the faces of our brothers and sisters.”