Courtney Mares

On the third day of a weeklong Vatican meeting on marriage and family Oct. 9, Catholic bishops grappled with a trend that worries many Church leaders: young couples choosing to live together rather than wed.

Pope Leo XIV offers his advice to young people on finding authentic true love and commitment in marriage in a new book foreword published Oct. 6.

From his arrival in Paris on Sept. 25 to his encounters with the sick and disabled in Lourdes, Pope Leo made the dignity of every human life the defining theme of his first visit to the country.

Bishop Robert E. Barron met Pope Leo XIV for a private audience at the Vatican Oct 1, describing his first extended, one-on-one conversation with a pope as covering “a lot of different topics.”

Pope Leo XIV led tens of thousands of people in a candlelight rosary procession Sept. 27 in the Marian shrine of Lourdes, saying that he had come as “a pilgrim among pilgrims.”

In the Marian shrine of Lourdes, Pope Leo XIV prayed for the sick and the suffering and drank from healing spring water in the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858.