The Vatican’s financial planning, budgeting, auditing, investing and saving are essential for carrying out the Catholic Church’s mission and must be handled with the highest sense of responsibility and prudence, Pope Francis wrote in a letter to the staff of the Secretariat for the Economy.

Pope Francis said he has decided to be buried in Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major instead of in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican and that he has simplified the rites for a papal funeral.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is “the mother of all mothers — a loving bridge between worlds and peoples who unifies through her maternal embrace,” the U.S. bishops’ migration chairman said in a statement issued on the Dec. 12 Marian feast.

The Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has upheld a rule mandating that the ashes of the deceased be preserved in a consecrated place, but it also said family members could request “a minimal part of the ashes” be kept in a sacred place “of significance for the history of the deceased person.”

The iconic image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which has become a cultural and spiritual symbol for Latin America, cannot be used to promote any kind of ideology, but must maintain its message of simple love, Pope Francis said.

Red Rose Rescue, the small Michigan-based group that has conducted blockades of abortion clinics in Michigan, New York and Virginia since 2017, was ordered Dec. 8 to abide by a new restriction on clinic access covering 13 counties in New York.

As the humanitarian crisis escalates in Gaza — amid tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered near Gaza’s border with Egypt, attempting to flee, and a health care system on the verge of collapsing — a Gaza priest warned that Christians in Gaza are suffering a lot.

The council of the Synod of Bishops will ask Pope Francis to authorize studies on the need to update canon law, revise the rules for priestly formation, deepen a theological reflection on the diaconate — including the possibility of ordaining women deacons — and consider revising a document that provides norms for the relationship of a bishop with members of religious orders in his diocese.

The Texas Supreme Court on Dec. 11 overruled a district judge’s order allowing a pregnant mother to obtain an abortion under an exemption to the state’s abortion ban.

For the first time in history, 150 homeless people had a festive meal, served by Italian journalists and their families, under the famous baroque Bernini’s colonnade in St. Peter’s Square.