The common good — and not political or economic gain — should be at the heart of the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19, Pope Francis said.

Franciscan Father Francesco Patton, custos of the Holy Land, asked Catholics around the world to make a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land and make a real donation to support the church in the region.

Gossip is “a plague worse than COVID,” Pope Francis said, asserting that while speaking ill of others comes almost naturally, it is a tool of the devil to divide the church.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Father Michel J. Mulloy — who had been appointed but not installed as bishop of Duluth, Minnesota — after an allegation of sexual abuse was raised against him from the 1980s when he was a priest in South Dakota.

Pope Francis will travel to Assisi Oct. 3 to sign an encyclical on the social, political and economic obligations that flow from a belief that all people are children of God and therefore brothers and sisters to one another.

Courses at the pontifical universities begin in October, but seminarians will only begin to explore Rome once their quarantine has ended.

Pope Francis has asked Catholics and all people of goodwill to observe Sept. 4 as a day of prayer and fasting for Lebanon.

Christ’s cross is a powerful symbol of God’s love for humanity and not just a decoration or trinket, Pope Francis said.

Astronomers construct and play with a variety of mathematical models, and one popular model looks at how likely it is that civilizations on different planets could end up contacting each other. Scientists have proposed various simulations and predictions, and now a Jesuit astronomer and former director of the Vatican Observatory has co-authored a study offering a new set of results.

“Christian charity is not simple philanthropy but, on the one hand, it is looking at others through the eyes of Jesus himself and, on the other hand, seeing Jesus in the face of the poor,” the pope said.