ASSISI (SE): “We have not prayed against one another today, as has unfortunately occurred in history,” Pope Francis said on September 20 in addressing a gathering of world religious leaders at an interfaith prayer for peace in the world at Assisi in Italy.

Looking at the vast diversity of his audience he noted, “Our religious traditions are diverse. But our differences are not the cause of conflict and provocation, or a cold distance between us.”

VATICAN (SE): “This is the thread of a satanic persecution,” Pope Francis said at a Mass celebrated on September 14 in memory of Father Jacques Hamel, the French priest who died on the sanctuary while he himself was celebrating Mass on July 26.

VATICAN (SE): The bishops of Argentina issued a pastoral letter in August this year containing guidelines for priests accompanying the divorced and remarried, including a guarded, but at the same time clear statement of the possibility of readmission to the sacraments in some circumstances.

VATICAN (SE): In revealing comments released prior to the publication of a book on the reflections of the former bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI says that he always thought that governance was the weak point of his pontificate and that Pope Francis is an excellent choice as his successor, even though it came as a big shock to him at the time.

HONG KONG (SE): A talk given by the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Cardinal Parolin, in the Italian town of Pordenone on August 27 was described by Francesco Sisci, from Renmin University in Beijing, as a hint to how much the Vatican is prepared to suffer in order to achieve peace and establish a more workable relationship with China.

HONG KONG (SE): A large crowd gathered at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on September 4 to hear Pope Francis proclaim Mother Teresa of Kolkata a tireless worker of mercy, describing her as an icon of God’s love, as he declared the woman who has become known as the Saint of the Poor a saint of the Catholic Church.

KRAKOW (SE): There are a few football teams that wear black and white, but beyond that there is little in life that can be described as being anything other than shades of grey.

On July 30, Pope Francis told a group of Polish Jesuits during World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, that the confessional is certainly one of those grey areas.

VATICAN (CNS): Pope Francis met privately at the Vatican with French president, Francois Hollande, who said he felt it necessary to thank the pope in person for his words after the slaying of a French priest and other terrorist attacks in France.

Hollande arrived in Rome on August 17 and went directly to the French national church, St. Louis, to visit a chapel which was set up as a place of prayer for the victims of terrorism.