As the Holy Land marked a grim first anniversary Oct. 7 of the Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities and subsequent Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip, the papal almoner raised $35,000 in one afternoon from delegates to the Synod on Synodality and immediately sent it to Holy Family Parish in Gaza City.

The Vatican group studying the question of women’s ministry, including the ordination of women to the diaconate, will expand its consultative phase to include women who do not serve as consultors to the dicastery in charge of the study group, synod officials announced.

Pope Francis will welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy back to the Vatican Oct. 11, four months after their last meeting, the Vatican press office announced.

Most people claim they want unity, but usually they mean they want others to unite around their own point of view, which gives rise to conflict, Pope Francis said.

God works in mysterious ways, but the Holy Father is even more mysterious, Cardinal-designate Mykola Bychok, eparch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Australia and Oceania, told The Catholic Weekly on the day of his appointment.

Almost half of the 21 cardinals-to-be Pope Francis recently announced were already in Rome attending the Synod of Bishops on synodality, but that didn’t necessarily mean they all heard the news when it happened.

Just as the nation’s founders relied on God’s providence, so too must all those serving in the U.S. legal profession and government today depend on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, said the homilist during the 72nd annual Red Mass Oct. 6 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington.

With one current member of the College of Cardinals — Venezuelan Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo of Caracas — about to celebrate his 80th birthday, when the new cardinals are inducted into the college in December, there could be as many as 141 “cardinal electors.”

Evangelization does not have to be complicated or “sophisticated,” even in highly secularized places, Pope Francis told Jesuits living in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

The Georgia Supreme Court temporarily reinstated Oct. 7 the state’s six-week abortion ban while it reviews an appeal of a previous lower court ruling that had struck down the law.