At his general audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis continued his catechesis on the family, focussing again on the complementarity of men and women.

Pope Francis commented on the second account of the creation of man in Genesis (following his commentary at the previous audience on the first account of man’s creation. The first man, Adam, is created “alone” – and God determines to make for him “a helper suited to him.” When the first woman is presented to the man, he recognizes in her “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” Finally there is a mirroring, a reciprocity,” the Pope said…

“Today the Church is the Church of martyrs”. And among these martyrs are “our brothers whose throats were cut on the beach of Libya; that young man burned alive by companions for being a Christian; those immigrants on the high seas thrown overboard for being Christians; those Ethiopians assassinated for being Christians”. In the chapel of Casa Santa Marta on Friday morning, 21 April, recounting the story of the first martyr, St Stephen, Pope Francis recalled the many present-day martyrs: including those whose names we do not know, who are suffering in prisons or who are defamed and persecuted “by so many modern Sanhedrins”, or for living “the faith within their own family”…

 Press statement of the President of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), Reinhard Cardinal Marx, on the tragedy in the Mediterranean.

“We cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a vast cemetery!” This was the call of Pope Francis to the European States, in his address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 25 November 2014, in which he encouraged “mutual support” and warned for the risk of “particularistic solutions”…

May the witness of the martyrs help us to avoid the temptation of transforming our faith into power. Those were Pope Francis’ words during his homily at the morning Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Monday, as he reflected on the Gospel story of the crowds who come searching for Jesus following the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes…

Pope Francis has appealed to the international community to take swift and decisive action to avoid more tragedies of migrants seeking a better life. His heartfelt cry to the world came following news of the sinking of yet another boat carrying migrants in the Mediterranean Sea in which it is feared 700 people may be dead.

The Pope was speaking on Sunday morning after the Regina Coeli prayer in St…