As the fighting in Gaza drags on, Pope Francis welcomed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the Vatican. The Vatican press office said the two spoke privately for 30 minutes.

Many Syrians remain apprehensive about how religious minorities, including Christians, will be treated in a new political reality being established by a Sunni militia that is still listed as a terror organization by the U.S. State Department.

After another disputed election, street protests wrack Mozambique. while a northern province, Cabo Delgado, endures a deadly Islamist insurrection.

“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”

The freed hostages also said they hoped the incoming Trump administration would work with the outgoing Biden administration to bring the remaining hostages home.

The Editors: This moment cries out for the kind of decisive action that perhaps only a lame-duck presidency can bring about: putting the burden of peace on Israel for bringing the war in Gaza to an end.