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.

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

On Sunday, Father Jan Korditschke will hold a ceremony at a Jesuit parish in Berlin for any couple, gay or straight, who seeks a blessing from the church.

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.”

German Catholics will bless same-sex unions at about 100 different services all over the country this week.

“The 1950s were a time of recovery, the beginning of prosperity in the West,” Cardinal Czerny told the congregation, among whom were Hungarian clergy and laity, and diplomats from other countries. “There was even hope of new freedom in the Communist world