Pope Francis delivered a video message to the organisers, players and fans participating in the 2014 World Cup tournament in Brazil. Delivered in Portuguese, the message expresses the Holy Father’s hope that, in addition to a celebration of sport, this World Cup can be transformed into a festival of solidarity between peoples.

The message goes on to say sport is not only a form of entertainment, but also a tool to communicate the values ​​that promote the good of the human person and help to build a more peaceful and fraternal coexistence…

• Pope Francis warned corrupt persons in positions of power that they would do well to fear God’s justice and repent on Wednesday, during the course of the catechetical portion of his weekly General Audience, dedicated to the seventh and final of the gifts of the Holy Spirit: fear of the Lord.

  Departing repeatedly from his prepared text in Italian for emphasis, the Holy Father spoke of the fear of the Lord, not as a servile or supine disposition before the Lord, but as the grateful response of people who have first been loved by the infinite love of God the Father…

“Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare”, the courage “to say yes to encounter and no to conflict: yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities; yes to respect for agreements and no to acts of provocation; yes to sincerity and no to duplicity”.

This was Pope Francis message to his guests Sunday evening – the Israeli and Palestinian Presidents Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas – as he welcomed them to his home for an Invocation for Peace in the Holy Land…

The European Commission decided on 28 May not to submit any legislative proposal as a reply to the European Citizens Initiative ‘One of Us’. This initiative asked for the ending of the EU financing of activities which presuppose the destruction of human embryos, in particular in the areas of research (projects making use of human embryonic stem cells – hESC) and development cooperation (abortion, either directly or indirectly financed)…