Pope Francis Archives

Patriarch Kirill and Parolin: Russian Orthodox and Catholics united for peace

During their meeting in Moscow, the Vatican Secretary of State, Italian, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill discussed the two churches mutual positions regarding the Ukraine crisis, which Kirill described as “close,” and also the plight of the populations living in the Middle East, including persecuted Christians.

Parolin and Russian Foreign Minister discuss Middle East, Ukraine

Vatican Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed a vast array of topics during their meeting on August 22. On the agenda were the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, religious freedom and violence in Venezuela.

Vatican’s top diplomat says climate on Russia trip is ‘very constructive’

Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and effectively the pope’s top aide, is in Russia this week for meetings with both Patriarch Kirill of Mosow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and President Vladimir Putin. Though there are some thorny issues between Rome and Moscow, including Ukraine, Parolin described the climate on day one as “positive.”

Get off the couch to see the good that our fathers left us, pope says
- Global Church
- August 21, 2017
“We can’t watch reality from the terrace, nor can we remain comfortably seated on the couch watching the world pass before our eyes on TV,” the pope wrote in a letter to the annual Rimini Meeting by Communion and Liberation. “Only by earning back the true, the beautiful and the good that our fathers have left us, will we be able to experience as an opportunity this epochal change that we are immersed in, as a chance to communicate convincingly to men the joy of the Gospel.”
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Pope calls for an end to ‘collective and arbitrary’ expulsion of migrants
- Vatican
- August 21, 2017
In a message for the Vatican-sponsored “World Day of Migrants and Refugees,” set for Jan. 14, Pope Francis called the “lamentable situation” of migrants and refugees fleeing war, persecution, natural disasters and poverty a “sign of the times,” and called for nations to rise up to the challenge of “Welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating migrants and refugees.”
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Papal confidante says ‘Amoris’ critics locked in ‘death-trap’ logic
- Vatican
- August 21, 2017
Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, rector of the Catholic University in Buenos Aires and sometimes described as the pope’s amanuensis, has issued a systematic defense of “Amoris Laetitia,” Francis’s controversial document on the family, saying its critics are locked in a “death-trap” logic and their approach risks “a betrayal of the heart of the Gospel.”
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