VATICAN (CNS): “Dear young people, take courage, enter within yourselves and ask God: ‘What do you want from me?’ Allow God to answer you. Then you will see how your life is transformed and filled with joy,” Pope Francis said in a video message for the upcoming World Youth Day, released by the Vatican on November 21.
 

VATICAN (CNS): When Pope Francis visits Panama for World Youth Day from January 23 to 27, he will meet with young people unable to attend the festivities: some in jail and with some living with HIV.
 
He also will dedicate the altar of Panama’s newly renovated 400-year-old cathedral, meet with bishops from Central America and have lunch with some of the young people attending the youth day gathering, according to the schedule released by the Vatican November 20.
 

VATICAN (CNS): “We Christians cannot stand with arms folded in indifference” or thrown up in the air in helpless resignation, Pope Francis said in his homily on November 18, the World Day of the Poor, noting that as the rich get richer, the increasing misery and cries of the poor are ignored every day.
 

VATICAN (CNS): The brutality of the First World War is a lesson that the world has yet to learn, Pope Francis said on November 11, Armistice Day.
 
World War I is a chapter in history that serves as a dire warning and a call for world leaders “to reject the culture of war and to seek every legitimate means to put an end to the conflicts that still stain many regions of the world with blood,” the pope said after praying the Angelus with people gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
 

VATICAN (CNS): Speaking on November 12 to members and experts invited to the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope Francis called on scientists worldwide to serve humanity and the health of the planet, which means they must also propose viable solutions to problems and persuade government leaders and policy makers to implement them.
 

VATICAN (CNS): At the end of the Synod of Bishops on young people, the faith and vocational discernment, the synod fathers writing to the world’s young people, said, “Our frailties and sins must not be an obstacle for your trust. The Church is your mother; she does not abandon you; she is ready to accompany you on new roads, on higher paths where the winds of the Spirit blow stronger—sweeping away the mists of indifference, superficiality and discouragement.”
 

VATICAN (CNS): “Welcome! It is nice to see you,” Pope Francis said, greeting visisting South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, at the entrance to the library of the Apostolic Palace on October 18. 
 
“I come here as the (South) Korean head of state but I am also Catholic and my baptismal name is Timothy. And for me it is an honour to meet you,” Moon replied.
 

VATICAN (CNS): Carrying Pope Paul VI’s pastoral staff and wearing the blood-stained belt of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, Pope Francis formally recognised them, along with five others, as saints of the Catholic Church.
 
Thousands of pilgrims from the new saints’ home countries—Italy, El Salvador, Spain and Germany—were joined by tens of thousands of others on October 14 in St. Peter’s Square to celebrate the universal recognition of the holiness of men and women they already knew were saints.
 

VATICAN (Agencies): The Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Young People,  Faith and Vocations opened on October 3 with Pope Francis praying for the Holy Spirit to renew hope and dynamism in the Church. 
 
Hope can “broaden our horizons, expand our hearts and transform those frames of mind that today paralyse, separate and alienate us from young people,” said Pope Francis.