More than two dozen popes have celebrated Mass under the giant canopy that rises over the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, but the impressive view from the top of 100-foot-tall bronze structure has been reserved for a select few: cleaners, contractors and restoration experts.

As the Holy Land marked a grim first anniversary Oct. 7 of the Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities and subsequent Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip, the papal almoner raised $35,000 in one afternoon from delegates to the Synod on Synodality and immediately sent it to Holy Family Parish in Gaza City.

The Vatican group studying the question of women’s ministry, including the ordination of women to the diaconate, will expand its consultative phase to include women who do not serve as consultors to the dicastery in charge of the study group, synod officials announced.

Most people claim they want unity, but usually they mean they want others to unite around their own point of view, which gives rise to conflict, Pope Francis said.

God works in mysterious ways, but the Holy Father is even more mysterious, Cardinal-designate Mykola Bychok, eparch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Australia and Oceania, told The Catholic Weekly on the day of his appointment.

Almost half of the 21 cardinals-to-be Pope Francis recently announced were already in Rome attending the Synod of Bishops on synodality, but that didn’t necessarily mean they all heard the news when it happened.

With one current member of the College of Cardinals — Venezuelan Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo of Caracas — about to celebrate his 80th birthday, when the new cardinals are inducted into the college in December, there could be as many as 141 “cardinal electors.”

Evangelization does not have to be complicated or “sophisticated,” even in highly secularized places, Pope Francis told Jesuits living in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

On the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Pope Francis expressed his solidarity with all those suffering because of conflicts throughout the Middle East, urged Christians to be peacemakers and warned warmongers they will face God’s judgment.

Members of the Synod of Bishops have voted to give up one of their few free afternoons to “dialogue” with the leaders of the study groups Pope Francis set up to reflect on important questions raised by the synod in 2023.