Children of Vatican employees began their summer holidays at a new outdoor sports area and pool as part of an annual summer program.

Vatican rulings on allegedly supernatural phenomena, such as Marian apparitions, will continue to be released publicly, but official validation of an event’s supernatural status — as has happened at Lourdes, Fatima and Guadalupe — would be “exceptional,” the Vatican’s doctrine chief said.

Following the example of a group of British cultural icons, a group of American “Catholics and non-Catholics” and prominent cultural and intellectual personalities asked Pope Francis in an open letter July 15 not to further restrict the traditional Latin Mass.

The pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading from St. Mark (6:7-13) about the mission of the 12 disciples in which Jesus sent them out “two by two” and told them “to take nothing for the journey” but only what was necessary.

More than 2 billion people in over 50 countries were set to go to the polls in 2024, according to the Center for American Progress, but Pope Francis has said he is worried that people are more disconnected than ever from the governments that are meant to provide for their well-being.

The Vatican expressed its concern about the violence waged at a political rally in the United States and it offered its prayers for the nation, the victims and peace.

St. Peter’s Basilica hired two women to its team of “sanpietrini,” the church’s specialized artisans and workers, for the first time since the basilica’s maintenance office was established 500 years ago.

Pope Francis met July 11 with Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, head of external church relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, the Vatican announced.

The working document for the October assembly of the Synod of Bishops on synodality has called for responses to how all the baptized can better serve the Catholic Church and help heal humanity’s “deepest wounds.”

The Vatican has made public its 1974 decision denying the authenticity of Marian apparitions alleged to have occurred in Amsterdam between 1945 and 1959.