Catholic News Service

The 90-minute documentary, "The Letter," a film on the pope's 2015 encyclical Laudato Si', is currently on YouTube and will air Dec. 21 on PBS. 

Decrying what he described as "hostile times" when antisemitism and violence against Christians are on the rise, Pope Francis said a renewed commitment to Catholic-Jewish dialogue is needed.

Even the most fervent believers go through moments of doubt and questioning about God, and it is a good thing, Pope Francis said, because it helps one see that God does not fit into the little box people make for him.

A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this summer by President Joe Biden, increases the size of the tax credit for conversions to renewable energy and makes nonprofit entities, like parishes, eligible to receive the tax benefits themselves.

Pope Francis asked Catholics around the world to join him in entrusting to Mary "the universal desire for peace, especially for the martyred Ukraine, which is suffering so much."

While many people involved with the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative continue to hope Pope Francis will issue an encyclical promoting nonviolence as a spirituality and way of life, they also know that Catholics already are engaged in teaching and supporting nonviolence in situations of conflict and exploitation around the globe.

Catholic bishops from four dioceses in the southern Philippines have called on the country's lawmakers to draft a law to impose a ban on mining across the entire Mindanao region.

Pope Francis and his international Council of Cardinals met in-person at the Vatican Dec. 5-6, discussing the continental phase of the synod process, safeguarding and the U.N. climate change summit, the Vatican press office said.

The mayor of Lviv, Ukraine, and a team of doctors treating those injured in the war gave Pope Francis a cross with an embedded piece of shrapnel removed from the body of a young girl.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Dec. 5 announced a redesignation of Temporary Protected Status for Haiti and an extension of TPS for Haitian migrants already residing in the United States for an additional 18 months, from Feb. 4 through Aug. 3, 2024.

Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby spent three days in Ukraine to show solidarity with the people there. It was the first visit of an archbishop of Canterbury to an independent Ukraine.

The state-appointed chairman of the commission to investigate abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne has quit, saying he doubted the independence of the commission and wondered whether its main aim was to protect Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.

Making churches accessible and services understandable is important, but having wheelchair ramps and sign-language interpreters is not enough for a parish to call itself "inclusive," Pope Francis said.

Stopping to gaze at and perhaps pray before a Nativity scene is one of the best ways to remember the real meaning of Christmas, Pope Francis said.

The season of Advent is a moment of grace to help believers stop being presumptuous and pretending to be self-sufficient, Pope Francis said.

Slovenian Jesuit Fr. Marko Rupnik, whose mosaics decorate chapels in the Vatican, all over Europe, in the United States and Australia, has been barred from hearing confessions or offering spiritual direction after what the Jesuits described as complaints about his ministry.

A Ukrainian bishop warned huge numbers of citizens could flee to Western countries during winter, and he appealed for continued international support in the face of a threatened "humanitarian catastrophe."

In a year that had little good news for immigrants in a nation of immigrants, there were some wins.

Saying they are outraged by growing "antisemitic rhetoric" across the country, members of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs urged Christians to decry hate-filled statements and violence aimed at Jewish individuals, homes and institutions.

Three years after Pope Francis appointed him to speed up financial reforms, transparency and budget controls at the Vatican, Jesuit Fr. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves has resigned for health reasons.