Even in countries with the strictest separation of church and state, being a Christian means living and acting like one, Pope Leo XIV told a group of politicians and civic leaders from France.

A pastoral reflection on immigration from the Iowa Catholic bishops aims to present church teaching in a way that “transcends” political rhetoric and “fear and false narratives” about the issue often found in secular and social media, Bishop Dennis G. Walsh of Davenport said.

New Orleans’ battered, 300-year-old history has been marked by fire, pestilence and storm, but Katrina was unprecedented in scope and pain: 1,400 people died; 200,000 homes in Orleans Parish — 80 percent of the city — flooded; and hundreds thousands fled or were transported to safe havens across the country, many never to return.

Pope Leo has consistently turned his audience’s eyes to St. Augustine, the fifth-century bishop who continues to serve as a philosophical and theological heavyweight in Catholic thought.

Pope Leo XIV sent his “heartfelt condolences and the assurance of spiritual closeness” to all those affected by the “terrible tragedy” of a shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis that left two children dead and 17 people injured.

A deadly mass shooting took place the morning of Aug. 27 at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis shortly after the start of the school day during an all-school Mass at the adjacent Annunciation Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIV appealed to Israel and Hamas to stop the violence that has caused “so much terror, destruction and death.”

Christian hope is not about avoiding pain and suffering but about knowing that God gives people the strength to persevere and to love even when things go wrong, Pope Leo XIV said.

In 2014, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family and a longtime broadcaster, became one of the first evangelical Christian leaders invited to speak at the national March for Life, joining a group of speakers that in past years had been dominated by Catholic clergy and Catholic members of Congress.

Two months after celebrating a new Mass “for the care of creation,” Pope Leo XIV will return to Castel Gandolfo to formally inaugurate Borgo Laudato Si’, a place of education, ecology and spirituality in the papal summer estate.