Although the public is given glimpses of what happens inside the Catholic Church's world Synod of Bishops, the meetings themselves take place behind closed doors.Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the Synod of Bishops has been the object of a continual hunt to balance creating a protect

"I have never been at a church meeting where there aren't groups that get together and lobby for a particular direction and that's going on, I assure you," Archbishop Chaput said. "That's what happens when human beings get together."

Not only will Pope Francis be the first pope to visit the U.S. Congress, but papal speeches to parliaments of any single nation are extremely rare.

A pope needs friends, needs mercy and needs to reach out to all people, Pope Francis said in two radio interviews released in mid-September.

Pope Francis said he was not “promoting the nullity of marriages, but the quickness of the processes.

In an extraordinary gesture for the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has extended to priests worldwide the authority to absolve women for the sin of abortion and has decreed the full validity during the year of the sacrament of confession celebrated by priests of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X.

Eleven cardinals, at least four of whom will participate in the world Synod of Bishops on the family in October, have urged fellow church leaders to maintain the church's rules regarding marriage and strengthen Catholic education about marriage and family life.

"Today as well, in the Middle East and other parts of the world, Christians are persecuted," Pope Francus said. "There are more martyrs [today] than there were in the first centuries" of Christianity."

Vatican nuncio to the Dominican Republic was accused of abusing adolescent boys

In the Year of Mercy, the Catholic Church's annual day of reflection and prayer on the situation of migrants and refugees will include a special reminder that "welcoming the stranger" is a corporal work of mercy.