Vatican

The Catholic Church and the world itself need the gifts and contributions of women, especially in bringing people together and overcoming tensions and violence, Pope Francis wrote.

Since 2016, Gisella Cardia has claimed to be seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in the central Italian town of Trevignano Romano, some 30 miles north of Rome, after bringing a statue of Mary with her from a trip to Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, which she said began to shed tears.

Pope Francis urged prideful people to recall one of Jesus’ moral commandments to “never judge.”

Just as Jesus drove out merchants from the temple in Jerusalem, Christians should cleanse themselves from a transactional relationship with God by developing an intimacy with him like that of a family in their home, Pope Francis said.