Christians can be peacemakers when they commit, with courage and humility, to strengthening relationships and to alleviating tensions between people, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis reportedly told a young gay man to “keep going” with his vocational search after he told the pope he felt called to the priesthood but was turned away by an Italian seminary because he told them he was gay.

Pope Francis announced that he is preparing a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus to “illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal, but also to say something significant to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”

Jesus considers all the baptized to be his friends and will always try to restore them to life and health as he did with his friend Lazarus in the Gospel, Pope Francis wrote.

Catholics will not positively influence fiscal policy unless they also develop an intricate knowledge of the financial system’s weaknesses and flaws, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis began a meeting with participants in a Focolare-sponsored conference by telling the movement’s president, “I pray for your homeland; I pray so much for your homeland, which is suffering at this time.”

Workers need spaces in which they can come together, form a sense of community and advocate for the marginalized, Pope Francis said.

Every encounter with people on the move as migrants or refugees is an encounter with Christ, Pope Francis said.

When Catholics carry the Eucharist through the streets, “we are not doing this to show off or to flaunt our faith” but to invite others to share in the life that Jesus gives by making himself a gift, Pope Francis said.

Forty-five years ago, on June 2, St. John Paul II started his first papal pilgrimage to his native Poland, then shackled by a communist dictatorship. The visit had not only an enormous impact on the spiritual renewal of the Polish nation, paving the way for democratic changes, but it also inspired future freedom fighters in other parts of the Soviet empire.