Although Catholic leaders and state Catholic conferences had pushed for the defeat of ballot measures protecting legal abortion and urged voters to pass measures restricting abortions, state voters ultimately went the other way Nov. 8.

For there to be peace, people need to expand their horizons, engage in dialogue and work with each other in a way that sets aside selfishness and ambition, Pope Francis said.

Leaders gathered in Egypt for the U.N. climate summit have “a moral obligation” to act seriously and together to safeguard the planet and to offer concrete aid to people suffering the “more frequent and more serious humanitarian impacts caused by climate change,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Russia’s ambassador to the Vatican confirmed Pope Francis helped facilitate recent prisoner exchanges with Ukraine and said the Vatican is ready to act as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia.

As the old saying goes: “There is no sinner without a future, and no saint without a past.”

Pope Francis avoided a direct confrontation with Italy’s new government over immigration policies, but he still insisted “lives must be saved.”

Traveling as a “sower of peace” to the Kingdom of Bahrain, Pope Francis further strengthened ties with the Muslim world and witnessed the joy and vitality of its minority and predominately expatriate Christian population.

A new outreach to teaching the faith, called the Institute on the Catechism, will be a springboard for faith formation developed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on the Catechism.

Numbers are a real challenge, but “those who get caught up in pessimism put faith aside,” the pope told students and staff of the Claretian Institute of the Theology of Consecrated Life in Rome and its affiliated programs in the Philippines, India, Colombia and Nigeria.

Pope Francis has continued to call on Russian and Ukrainian leaders to negotiate an end to the war, but the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church told him Russia wants only the destruction of Ukraine.