To see headlines suggesting that not having kids is in some way selfish would be painful. But did Pope Francis really say that?

This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J.—standing in for Colleen Dulle —and Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell survey the pope’s plans for the new year.

In a handwritten letter, Pope Francis congratulated Sister Gramick on “50 years of closeness, of compassion and of tenderness” in a ministry that he described as being in “the style of God.”

The “Faith Manifesto,” signed by around 6,000 people, sharply criticizes the demands of the Synodal Path, which amount to a “self-secularization of the church,” Bernhard Meuser said.

“Sometimes we live in a spirit of a ‘parking lot’; we stay parked, without the impulse of desire that carries us forward. We do well to ask: where are we on our journey of faith?”

“It is a risk, yes: having a child is always a risk, either naturally or by adoption,” Pope Francis said. ”But it is riskier not to have them.”