In a meeting on Thursday with a delegation from the World Evangelical Alliance, Pope Francis expressed his confidence that the Holy Spirit “can inaugurate a new stage in the relations between Catholics and Evangelicals—a stage that allows us to realize more fully the will of the Lord to bring the Gospel even to the furthest ends of the earth.”

Pope Francis spoke about the Sacrament of Baptism as “an inestimable divine gift” that all Christians have in common…

Pope Francis on Wednesday spoke about the importance of fairness and accessibility in the proceedings of Church Tribunals trying to adjudicate the validity of marriages.  

He made his remarks before his General Audience, when he briefly greeted participants of a course offered by the Tribunal of the Roman Rota on “Instructing a Case for the Dispensation of a Marriage ‘Super rato et non consumato’”  -valid, but unconsummated marriages – which can be dissolved under certain conditions according to Church law…

A Church that is not united around its bishop is a sick Church.  Jesus wanted unity between the bishop and all the faithful, starting with priests and deacons. However the role of bishop is not a position of honor, it is a service.  Therefore, there is no room in the Church for a worldly mentality, for people who seek ‘ecclesiastical careers’, for bishops who instead of lowering themselves in service, are vain, proud and power-hungry. 

The Ordained Ministries and in particular the role of Bishops and episcopal collegiality were the focus of Pope Francis’ General Audience catechesis this week…

Rivalry and vainglory are two worms that weaken the Church; instead we must act in a spirit of humility and harmony, without seeking our own interests said Pope Francis Monday morning at Mass in Casa Santa Marta. 

Taking a cue from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians, the Pope noted that a bishop’s joy lies in seeing love, unity and harmony in his Church…

In the over-informed society in which we live, the problem “is not finding a meaningful message, it is understanding it, in other words acknowledging it as important for me, as significant because of the multiple responses I get”. This was acknowledged by father Antonio Spadaro, director of the Jesuit fathers’ fortnightly magazine “La Civiltà Cattolica”, as he spoke earlier today at the meeting of the bishops in charge of social communication for the European Bishops Conferences, which is taking place in Athens (Greece) about “Communication as encounter, between authenticity and concreteness”, on the initiative of the Commission for Social Communication of Ccee (Council of European Bishops Conferences)…