Pope Francis called the deadly shooting at a school in Nashville a “senseless act of violence” and prayed that the grieving families hold strong to their faith and “bring good out of unspeakable evil.”

Pope Francis prayed for the victims of a “tragic” fire that killed at least 38 people and injured some 29 others at a migrant processing center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, March 27.

In a world where “there is no shortage of hotbeds of hatred and revenge,” Pope Francis told priests and seminarians that “we confessors must multiply the ‘hotbeds of mercy,'” by making it easy for people to access the sacrament of reconciliation.

Recognizing how war and political differences can increase Christian divisions, believers must keep their focus on Christ and his Gospel, said members of a delegation of the World Council of Churches that met with Pope Francis.

Clericalization led to the separation of the clergy from the faithful in the church’s liturgy celebrated before the Second Vatican Council, said Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household.

The Community of Sant’Egidio, which cares for the basilica and the shrine, hosted an event March 23 to dedicate a new exposition space among the ruins in the crypt as a museum and memorial to the new martyrs of both the 20th and 21st centuries.

Pope Francis has advanced the sainthood causes of five women and a priest.

When presenting its moral teachings on bioethics, the church needs to avoid falling into the “extremist dynamics of polarization” seen in media debates, Pope Francis said.

The “distorted” thought that one person is better than another goes against Catholic teachings and flies in the face of universal principles laid out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Holy See’s United Nations envoy told a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.

According to Father Phillip Larrey, dean of the philosophy department at the Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University, Silicon Valley techies are posing those questions to ethicists and religious leaders as artificial intelligence develops rapidly and is used in myriad ways impacting people’s daily lives.