Cindy Wooden

"Protocol develops over time, and this has never happened before," the director of the Vatican press office kept repeating in the days after the death of retired Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis will soon pack his bags for his first foreign trip of 2023, a year that promises to be as busy as ever.

The birth of Jesus in a stable "shows us God's 'style,' which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness," Pope Francis told visitors and pilgrims at his weekly general audience.

The most important question a Christian can ask when making any decision in life is "where the greatest love is to be found," Pope Francis wrote in a letter marking the 400th anniversary of St. Francis de Sales, a doctor of the church.

The day after Christmas the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, which emphasizes how the story of Jesus' birth is not a "fairy tale," but a call to live as witnesses of the Gospel, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis said he wrote a resignation letter in 2013, his first year in office, to be used in case he became physically or mentally impaired and unable to fulfill the duties of the papacy.

The interconnected "moral, social, political and economic crises" facing the world cannot be solved if individuals and nations continue to focus only on their own, immediate interests, Pope Francis said in his message for World Peace Day 2023.

The Vatican has had diplomatic contact with Russia regarding comments Pope Francis made about Russian minorities being responsible for the worst acts of cruelty in the country's war on Ukraine.

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet announced he is filing a defamation lawsuit in Quebec against a woman who accused him of sexual assault.

Recent popes have used the concept of a "Petrine principle" and a "Marian principle" to describe the important role women and men together play in the Catholic Church, but a biblical scholar writing in the Vatican newspaper said it is time to talk about the discriminatory and stereotypical notions behind it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While formal dialogue about the theological and historical causes of the splits in Christianity are essential, so, too, is a recognition that "sinful actions and attitudes" have contributed and continue to contribute to divisions in the body of Christ, Pope Francis said.

A daily examination of conscience is an important tool for recognizing where God is at work in one's life and where "the evil spirit" tries to lead one astray, Pope Francis said.

While some people want to "reform" the Catholic Church and others want "to put the brakes on the synod process," those involved in preparing the continental phase of the synod process want "to mend" the church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the pope, said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, relator general of the synod.