Franco Pisano

In a pastoral letter, Mgr Joseph Gan Jun-qiu writes that "we are called to reflect upon ourselves, meditate and renew our lives, to welcome the incarnation of the Messiah into our hearts". "The three key words for each family” are “'Excuse me', 'Please' 'Thank you!'"

"Do not talk about others". "If all of us were doing just that - not talking about others - peace would succeed. May the Lord prepare our hearts for the Christmas of the Prince of Peace. But, prepare us by doing us all, our part, to pacify: pacify my heart, my soul, pacify my family, the school, the neighborhood, the workplace ".

"Reaching the two-state solution". "Recognizing and preserving the identity and universal value" of Jerusalem, "combating all forms of extremism and fundamentalism".

It is a period that has "three dimensions": past, present and future. It serves to "purify the faith", to "purify hope" and to "purify vigilance", because the Lord will return.

A book-length interview with Francis is about to be released. “Clericalism is the root of many problems, as we can see. Clericalism is also behind the cases of abuse, as well as immaturity and neuroses. We need to pay close attention to this during training.”

The Chinese president met the heir to the Saudi throne on the sidelines of the G20. No reference was made to the Khashoggi affair. “China firmly supports Saudi Arabia in its push for economic diversification and social reforms,” a Chinese statement says.

Francis sent the Ecumenical Patriarch a letter for the feast day of Saint Andrew. "Our Churches,” he writes, “have safeguarded the Apostolic tradition with great care, along with the teaching of the first Ecumenical Councils and the Church Fathers, despite the differences that developed in local traditions and in theological formulations, which need to be more deeply understood and clarified.”

Anyone who says he is a Christian but lives as a pagan is "so bad for the people of God". On today's feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, patron of the Church of Constantinople, Francis invites us to be "close to the Church of Andrew", praying "for the unity of the Churches".

On the day of judgment, Babylon will be destroyed with a shout of victory. The "great whore" will fall, condemned by the Lord. And Jerusalem will see its downfall for another kind of corruption, "the corruption of infidelity to love; she was not able to recognize the love of God in her Son ".

“Nothing more than martyrdom can mark the Christian way of participating in humanity’s history of salvation,” writes Francis in his response to a letter from two Franciscans who expressed the pain of their homeland.

In Jesus the Commandments are no longer a series of negative prescriptions, "but the very flesh of Christ, who loves us, seeks us, forgives us, comforts us and in his Body recomposes communion with the Father, lost because of the disobedience of sin".

"This week let us ask the Holy Spirit for the wisdom of time, the wisdom of the end, the wisdom of the resurrection, the wisdom of eternal encounter with Jesus; let us understand this wisdom that is in our faith. An encounter with Jesus will be a day of joy ".