As part of its continuing efforts to promote transparency and to demonstrate its stability and adherence to industry standards, the Vatican bank published its annual report for the first time in its history.

Children make up about half of the Syrian refugee population. There are about 740,000 refugees under the age of 11. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports significant numbers of unaccompanied Syrian children crossing the borders with Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. At least 7,000 Syrian children are among the 100,000 casualties of the 32-month-old civil war.

As a series of consultations aimed at the reform of the Vatican bureaucracy began, Pope Francis told his group of cardinal advisers that humility and service attract people to the church, not power and pride.

An international obligation to intervene in situations of war or widespread violations of human rights does not mean a country or group of countries can decide to take military action in another nation, said the Vatican’s foreign minister.

If the church excluded sinners, it would pretty much be empty, Pope Francis told thousands of people gathered for his weekly general audience.

Who are the holy men and women Pope Francis looks up to? He revealed many of them in two recently published interviews. While a top-eight list does emerge from the interviews, the pope rejected one interviewer’s attempts at giving them a ranking.

Bishops in southern Philippines have condemned rebels’ use of hostages as human shields in gunfights with government troops. The gunfights have escalated since Sept. 9 after hundreds of Moro National Liberation Front fighters reportedly attacked government troops who were securing five coastal districts in Zamboanga.

Visiting an Italian region especially hard hit by the European economic crisis, Pope Francis blamed high unemployment on globalization driven by greed and said those who give charitable aid to the poor must treat their beneficiaries with dignity.

Governments and nongovernmental agencies are struggling to keep up with the needs and pressures created by the displacement of nearly a third of Syria’s population because of the country’s civil war.

The president of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference called the suicide bomb attack Sept. 22 at All Saints’ Church in Peshawar a “shameful act of cowardice,” adding that all Christian educational institutions in the country would be closed Sept. 23-25 in mourning and protest.