During his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 5, the pope said that knowing oneself requires “patient soul-searching” and the awareness of one’s “way of acting, of the feelings that dwell within us.”

In a meeting with the president of the German bishops’ conference, Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch apologized for offending people and said he never intended to imply that supporters of the German church’s Synodal Path were doing something similar to what a group of Christian supporters of the Nazis did in the 1930s.

The Vatican hosted the global premiere of a new documentary on the urgent need to address climate change on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the same day the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2015 Paris Agreement entered into force for the Holy See.

The Gospel’s message of hope to the suffering and downtrodden is sorely needed in today’s world, which is “enslaved by selfishness and full of contradictions and divisions,” Pope Francis said.

While their life journeys and the stages of their sainthood causes diverged, two men born in Italy are set to be canonized together Oct. 9: Blessed Giovanni Battista Scalabrini and Blessed Artemide Zatti.

True missionaries of hope allow the Holy Spirit into their hearts and lives, Pope Francis told members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists.

God wants people to live their vocation in a spirit of strength, Pope Francis told the Vatican gendarme corps, the police force of the tiny city-state.

With “rivers of blood and tears” still flowing in Ukraine and with the increasing threat of the use of nuclear weapons, Pope Francis begged Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Stop this spiral of violence and death.”

The Vatican synod hall became a stand full of cheering fans, pumping fists, clapping and shouting encouragement as instructed by Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, who led some 200 people in a group exercise.

The Vatican auditor general said he was surprised by the lack of ethical standards demonstrated by officials considering investment opportunities, including a failed London property development deal.