At a rather formal meeting in the Apostolic Palace and a more relaxed one with balloons and silly hats in the Vatican audience hall, Pope Francis told children that Christmas is a sign of how much God loves them, and they are called to share that love.

Responding to 11 questions it said had been raised about Pope Francis’ document restricting celebrations of the pre-Vatican II Mass, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments offered a few concessions to bishops but insisted the entire Latin-rite Catholic Church must move toward celebrating only one form of the Mass and sacraments.

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.