The AP interview with the pope also covered topics ranging from his health to the ongoing clerical sexual abuse crisis and from homosexuality to potential policies for regulating the retirement of a pope who renounces his office.

As war ravages Ukraine, the country cannot be divided among religious confessions but must be united behind “mother Ukraine,” Pope Francis said.

After the shooting Jan. 21 in Monterey Park, California, that killed 11 people and injured nine others, Pope Francis said that “the world is obsessed with having guns.”

Conflict and division hurt the mission of the Knights of Malta, and craving for power creates distance from Christ, Pope Francis told members of the religious, charitable and chivalric order.

Pope Francis did not need to launch listening sessions for the Synod of Bishops for people to discover there are tensions in the Catholic Church, said the cardinal serving as the synod’s relator general.

Catholic organizations applauded the announcement of a new State Department program that allows groups of private individuals to directly support refugees resettling in the U.S.

Dolores R. Leckey, who was founding director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for the Laity in 1977 and at the time one of the highest ranking women in the U.S. Catholic Church, died peacefully of natural causes Jan. 17 in her home in Arlington. She was 89.

Christians must not “put pressure on others” to convert or induce in them “feelings of guilt,” but take a weight off their shoulders through joyfully sharing the Gospel, Pope Francis said.

The media and the field of communications need to exercise more kindness and share the truth with charity, Pope Francis said.

Montse Alvarado, vice president and executive director of Becket, the Washington-based religious liberty firm, has been named president and chief operating officer of EWTN News Inc., the EWTN Global Catholic Network announced Jan. 23.