Pilgrims passing through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica during the Holy Year 2025, going to confession, receiving Communion and praying for the intentions of the pope can receive an indulgence, but so can inmates in prison and those who work to defend human life or assist migrants and refugees.
The spiritual practice of reparation "may be somewhat forgotten or wrongly judged obsolete" today, but it is essential for the promotion of justice and healing, including on behalf of those who have suffered abuse in the church, Pope Francis said.
Pope Francis signed a letter on synodality in the presence of parish priests and urged them to be "missionaries of synodality," said several of the priests present.
In a meeting at the Vatican on May 2, Pope Francis received assurances from Jordan's King Abdullah II that Christian and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem will be protected amid the Israel-Hamas war.
"Here, then, is the great enemy of faith: it is not intelligence, it is not reason, as, alas, some continue obsessively to repeat," Francis said. The enemy is "simply fear."
Loretto Sr. Jeannine Gramick recently wrote to Pope Francis to express disappointment with a new Vatican document that condemned "gender ideology." Francis told Gramick: "Transgender people must be accepted and integrated into society."
Pope Francis has now established 10 working groups to study some of the most controversial issues that have emerged in the Synod of Bishops. Theologians say it is difficult to assess what their impact might be.
Pope Francis has written to a group of parents of LGBTQ persons, responding to their criticism of a Vatican document that condemned gender theory and gender-affirming surgeries. He told them he received their critique with an "open heart."
"Tradition comes alive in the art of creatively transmitting the messages entrusted to us. We must transmit them in new translations into a living, intelligible language," Father Tomáš Halík, a Czech theologian, told the priests. "To be faithful to tradition is not to be resistant to change."
