In the second of a two-part series for The Record, Irish professor Dr Eamon Con-way from the University of Notre Dame Australia gives an insight into the up-coming pontificate of Pope Leo XIV.

Cardinal Grech told bishops that Pope Francis approved the three-year plan on 11 March at Rome’s Gemelli hospital where he had been being treated since the 14 February.

In his prepared text, Pope Francis focused on the birth of Jesus, the messianic king, in a humble stable.

Speaking at the Vatican on 25 August, Pope Francis said, “If someone commits evil against his people, he will be guilty of that, but he cannot have committed evil just because he prayed.”

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, told reporters during an online meeting on Tuesday 16 October that he is willing to do “anything” to “bring to freedom and bring home the children” taken into Gaza during Hamas’ on 7 October attack on Israel, in which more than 1,300 Israelis were killed.

In order to help people encounter Jesus, priests “need to listen to the Spirit together with the whole people of God, so as to renew our faith and find new ways and languages to share the Gospel with our brothers and sisters,” Secretary-General of the Synod of the Bishops, Cardinal Mario Grech and Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, Archbishop Lazarus You Heung-sik have written, in a letter to priests and clergy released 19 March. By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service.

Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, Archbishop Arthur Roche has this week released a letter saying Catholic men and women formally installed in the new ministry of catechists are not simply religious education teachers but are engaged in “the proclamation and transmission of the faith”.

Blessed Charles de Foucauld will finally be canonised 15 May 2022, the Vatican announced on 9 November. Along with Blessed de Foucauld, the spring ceremony will see the canonisation of the Indian martyr Devasahayam Pillai and five founders of religious orders.

“I am sure that all of those who went with goodwill (to war), called by their country to defend it, are with the Lord,” Pope Francis said, celebrating Mass on the feast of All Souls, on Tuesday 2 November at the French Military Cemetery in Rome.

Pope Francis left the Vatican in the morning to attend the general chapter, which was held in Rome from 11 Sept to 24 Oct. The theme of the assembly was “Generative Communities of Life in the Heart of Contemporaneity.”