Adam Piekarski, a homeless man from Lódz, Poland, never imagined that the sketches he would draw in his free time while waiting for the public showers near Bernini’s Colonnade would lead to the opportunity of a lifetime.

With many “thanks” and “best wishes,” a group of 10 asylum-seekers greeted Pope Francis on his birthday Dec. 17.

The decrease of vocations to religious life, including in the Society of Jesus, is a lesson in humility and a reminder that a calling to religious life depends on God, Pope Francis told Jesuits in Greece.

Pope Francis established a new Vatican foundation that will promote initiatives based on the principles set out in his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship.”

Catholic men and women formally installed in the new ministry of catechists are not simply religious education teachers but are engaged in “the proclamation and transmission of the faith, carrying out this role in collaboration with the ordained ministers and under their guidance,” said a letter accompanying the Latin text of the Rite of Institution of Catechists.

Pope Francis encouraged people to take part in a new global campaign launched by Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based umbrella organization for national Catholic charities.

The Christmas tree and Nativity crèche should evoke the joy and the peace of God’s love and not the selfish indulgence of consumerism and indifference, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis closed the Year of St. Joseph with a private visit to a community in Rome that helps people experiencing marginalization, crisis or substance abuse.

A dream that Doug LaViolette had for well over a year — something he said a few friends told him was “crazy”– has come true.

The long-planned encounter between Indigenous Canadians and Pope Francis in Rome is being put off while everybody learns more about the omicron variant of COVID-19, according to a joint release from three Indigenous organizations involved in the trip and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.