Cardinal Renato Martino, the former Vatican observer at the United Nations and former president of the pontifical councils for justice and peace and for migrants and travelers, died Oct. 28 at the age of 91.

The Vatican dicastery charged with overseeing and assisting religious orders confirmed that it plans to conduct an apostolic visitation of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which was founded in 1988 by traditionalist priests wanting to maintain the old liturgical rites while remaining in full communion with the pope.

More than a week after the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, the Vatican joined people who complained that a segment of the show featuring drag performers offended Christians.

At the brief meeting with participants in a seminar on the ethics of health care management, the pope said he was suffering from a "bronchial condition. Thank God it was not pneumonia," but he said it was a very serious bronchial infection.

Pope Francis expressed his concern about concrete initiatives individual dioceses and the Catholic Church in Germany as a whole are taking, including the establishment of a synodal council, which, he said, threaten to steer it away from the universal church.

Pope Francis said the title of his new letter on the environment will be "Laudate Deum," (Praise God), a frequent refrain in several psalms, including Psalm 148, which tells the heavens and the angels and the sun and moon to praise the Lord.

Pope Francis accepted the letters of credential of Russia's new ambassador to the Holy See, Ivan D. Soltanovsky, who officially began his mission four months after his predecessor left Rome.

After uniting two offices in June to form the Dicastery for Culture and Education, Pope Francis named a full slate of 34 members and 40 consultants for the office which promotes human values in culture and education and works with Catholic schools and universities around the world.

Most of the 18 Catholic missionaries murdered in 2022 were not carrying out high-risk missions when they were assassinated but were simply "immersed and submerged in the ordinariness of their lives and their apostolic work," said the editor of Fides, the Vatican's missionary news service.

Almost 800,000 Moravian stars in various sizes and colours will leave the factory in the German state of Saxony this year. At least one member of the production team has worked on each and every one of them.