Catholic News Service

"In the journey of life, we could identify hope as the signpost that marks our itinerary," Pope Francis said during a meeting with seminarians from Córdoba, Spain, Jan. 17.

The rabbi accused Pope Francis of fueling anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments by focusing on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and not acknowledging the multiple threats to Israel's existence.

To ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used in an ethical, transparent and responsible manner in Vatican City State, the city-state governor's office has released a set of guidelines on AI, which will be followed by new laws and regulations.

Taking up the spirit of the recently inaugurated Holy Year 2025, the Cuban government has announced the release of 553 people currently serving prison sentences. That same day, the White House announced that it will no longer designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and that it would eliminate some restrictions on Cuba.

"An economy that kills, that excludes, that starves, that concentrates enormous wealth in a few to the detriment of many, that multiplies poverty and grinds down salaries, that pollutes, that produces war, is not an economy," he said in an autobiography released Jan. 14. It is a perversion, "an emptiness, an absence, a sickness."

Meeting more than 7,000 pilgrims who filled the Vatican audience hall or pressed against crowd-control barriers outside, Francis began a series of Saturday general audiences designed, as he said, to "welcome and embrace all those who are coming from all over the world in search of a new beginning."

The Vatican's top diplomat met with papal representatives to various Middle Eastern countries to discuss possible avenues toward peace in the region and the state of the Catholic Church there.

When children are baptized, their parents and the church are giving them the greatest gift ever: the gift of faith, Pope Francis said before baptizing 21 infants in the Sistine Chapel.

"I am praying for all of you," Pope Francis said, using his televised Sunday Angelus address to speak directly to the people impacted by the wildfires in Southern California.

A cross containing dirt stained with the blood of Sister Dorothy Stang, a U.S. member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur shot down in the Amazon 20 years ago, and one of her sweaters were placed Jan. 10 on the altar of the "new martyrs of the Americas" in Rome's Basilica of St. Bartholomew.

Rather than supporting the growth of commercial technology and artificial intelligence, governments should be supporting families and educators in being the main channels of passing on culture and values, Pope Francis told ambassadors and other diplomats accredited to the Holy See.

From Dec. 24, when the pope inaugurated the Holy Year, to Jan. 7, the Vatican said, 545,532 people from around the world have made the journey along the lengthy boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square and crossed through the basilica's Holy Door.

"May we learn to care for every child born of a woman, above all by protecting, like Mary, the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying."

In its annual report on pastoral workers killed, Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, listed eight priests and five laymen. Six were killed in Africa, five in Central or South America, and two were killed in Europe.

Marking the feast of the Holy Family Dec. 29, Francis reflected on the day's Gospel reading from St. Luke in which the 12-year-old Jesus goes missing from his parents and is found in the temple of Jerusalem.

After Pope Francis prayed on Christmas Day for Syrian Christians facing uncertainty amid the country's regime change, the leader of the Catholic Church in neighboring Iraq said the toppling of the regime left Christians in the region feeling "tense."

"I wanted the second Holy Door to be the one here, at a prison," Francis told the inmates. "I wanted all of us, inside or out, to have an opportunity to throw open the doors of our hearts and understand that hope does not disappoint."

Victor Genina Cervantes, director of integral human development at Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organization for national Catholic charities around the world, presented the campaign "Turn Debt into Hope" at a Vatican news conference Dec. 23, the eve of the opening of Holy Year 2025.

Israel's minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism asked Pope Francis to clarify his remarks about the need to investigate whether the current war in Gaza constitutes a genocide.

An Italian association for LGBTQ+ Christians, their parents and the priests and religious who minister with them is among the many groups registered to make a pilgrimage together through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.