VATICAN (CNS): Christians are called to follow the spirit of the beatitudes by comforting the poor and the oppressed, especially migrants and refugees who are rejected, exploited and left to die, Pope Francis said during a Mass commemorating the sixth anniversary of his visit to the southern Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on July 8.
 

VATICAN (CNS): In late September 2018, the German Bishops’ Conference released a study that revealed an estimated 3,700 cases of sexual abuse were reported in Germany from 1946 to 2014. The statistics prompted outrage in the general public and the German bishops held several meetings to discuss reforms; some of the suggestions included reviewing the Church’s discipline on priestly celibacy, reviewing Church law, promoting more women in Church administration and reviewing Catholic teaching on sexual morality.
 

VATICAN (CNS): Pope Francis welcomed Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to the Vatican on July 4, and the two discussed the ongoing wars in Eastern Ukraine and in Syria, the Vatican said. Russia plays a major role in both conflicts.
 
Alessandro Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican press office, issued a statement describing the discussions with Putin as “cordial.”
 

VATICAN (CNS): In what Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople described as a “brave and bold” gesture, Pope Francis gave the patriarch a famous reliquary containing bone fragments believed to belong to St. Peter.
 
The only time the bronze reliquary has been displayed publicly was in November 2013, when Pope Francis had it present for public veneration as he celebrated the closing Mass for the Year of Faith, opened by Pope Benedict XVI.
 

VATICAN (SE): “With immense sadness, the Holy Father has seen the images of the father and his baby daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande River while trying to cross the border between Mexico and the United States,” interim Director of the Holy See Press Office, Alessandro Gisotti, told reporters on June 26, Vatican News reported.
 

VATICAN (CNS): “We are not the owners: Life is entrusted to us and doctors are its servants. Your mission is at the same time a witness of humanity, a privileged way of making people see, of making them feel that God our father takes care of every single person, without distinction,” Pope Francis said during a meeting with members of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations on June 22.
 
Members of the association were in Rome to celebrate the organisation’s consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

VATICAN (CNS): “We do not have the luxury of waiting for others to step forward or of prioritising short-term economic benefits. The climate crisis requires our decisive action, here and now,” Pope France told energy and oil executives and global investors on June 14 at the Vatican.
 
They were taking part in a June 13 to 14 conference on Energy Transition and Care for Our Common Home, sponsored by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the United States of America.

VATICAN (CNS): Addressing participants at a gathering of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service— known as Charis—on June 8, Pope Francis said that through their “baptism in the Holy Spirit, unity in the body of Christ and service to the poor,” they can bear witness to God’s love and evangelize the world.
 
He noted, however, that without love, establishing evangelisation offices or implementing carefully planned programmes “is useless.”
 

VATICAN (CNS): “Communicating is perhaps the challenge that we have with young people,” Pope Francis told the Congress for the Pastoral Care of Vocations in Europe on June 6.