The Vatican has informed Italy that a draft law to fight homophobia and discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity could violate the freedom of Catholics to teach and practice their faith.

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes,” St. John Paul II said.

Pope Francis has named U.S. Cardinals Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and James M. Harvey, archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, to be members of the Vatican’s supreme court.

Poverty is the result of people’s selfishness; it is not “fate” or the fault of the poor, Pope Francis said.

In an ongoing effort to promote Catholic lay movements and associations and protect their members from possible abuse by the groups’ leaders, the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life has imposed term limits on leadership and ordered the groups to ensure all members have a voice in choosing their leaders.

Agreeing with German Cardinal Reinhard Marx that Catholic leaders cannot adopt an “ostrich policy” in the face of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, Pope Francis still told the cardinal that he would not accept his resignation as head of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

A nun who was brutally stabbed in a satanic sacrifice was beatified a martyr June 6 in the northern Italian city where she served.

People’s hearts and the entire church must be wide open to wonder and devotion to Christ and ready to embrace everyone — sinner and saint alike, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis led hundreds of pilgrims and visitors in St. Peter’s Square in a moment of silent prayer for the Indigenous children who died in Canadian residential schools and for their grieving families.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, 67, has submitted his resignation to Pope Francis, saying that bishops must begin to accept responsibility for the institutional failures of the church in handling the clerical sexual abuse crisis.