Carol Glatz

To ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used in an ethical, transparent and responsible manner in Vatican City State, the city-state governor's office has released a set of guidelines on AI, which will be followed by new laws and regulations.

"An economy that kills, that excludes, that starves, that concentrates enormous wealth in a few to the detriment of many, that multiplies poverty and grinds down salaries, that pollutes, that produces war, is not an economy," he said in an autobiography released Jan. 14. It is a perversion, "an emptiness, an absence, a sickness."

Pope Francis has named three U.S. experts — two women and an abbot — to be members of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, a position once reserved for cardinals and bishops.

When children are baptized, their parents and the church are giving them the greatest gift ever: the gift of faith, Pope Francis said before baptizing 21 infants in the Sistine Chapel.

Rather than supporting the growth of commercial technology and artificial intelligence, governments should be supporting families and educators in being the main channels of passing on culture and values, Pope Francis told ambassadors and other diplomats accredited to the Holy See.

"May we learn to care for every child born of a woman, above all by protecting, like Mary, the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying."

Israel's minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism asked Pope Francis to clarify his remarks about the need to investigate whether the current war in Gaza constitutes a genocide.

On Pope Francis' 88th birthday, two major newspapers published two different excerpts from his new book on hope. The New York Times published the pope's words on the importance of humor, while Italy's Corriere della Sera ran the pope's recollection of his March 2021 trip to Iraq, revealing that two suicide bombers had been planning to attack him, but were intercepted and killed by police.

Pope Francis received a new, emission-free, all-electric popemobile from representatives of Mercedes-Benz, the German car manufacturer that has been supplying vehicles for the popes for nearly 100 years.

Often homilies are so long, 20 or 30 minutes, that people will go outside to smoke a cigarette and come back, the pope said.

Pope Francis praised a new ceasefire reached in Lebanon, prayed for Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Gaza, and appealed to world leaders to help put an end to the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened that the conflict could spread after Ukraine fired U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles Nov. 19 and U.K.-supplied cruise missiles Nov. 20 into Russian territory.

A local Italian group launched an online petition urging Pope Francis, the Vatican and others to stop the "fir tree-icide" of cutting down a 200-year-old red pine to decorate St. Peter's Square for Christmas.

The private meeting with 16 people, including two children, took place at the Vatican Nov. 14.

Predatory practices and technology for the benefit of the powerful few have disrupted the relationship between human labor and the natural environment, said Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Pope Francis appointed a new preacher of the papal household: a 53-year-old Italian Capuchin priest who studied computer science and mathematics and discovered his vocation while reading a free copy of St. Matthew's Gospel on the subway.

Pope Francis has accepted the request of Indonesian Bishop Paskalis Bruno Syukur of Bogor to dispense him from becoming a cardinal as planned in December. Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said Syukur wanted "to grow further in priestly life, in his service to the Church and the people of God."

At a Vatican news conference presenting the encyclical, an archbishop said that Dilexit Nos is the "key" to understanding Pope Francis' pontificate, presenting the spiritual and theological foundation underlying the pope's message for the past 12 years — that everything "springs from Christ and his love for all humanity."

Catholics in Asia and Africa have already been leading the way with synodality, two members of the Synod of Bishops on synodality said.

"This is just one synod. There will be others. We do not have to do everything, just take the next step,"  Cardinal-designate Timothy Radcliffe said, and those who come after will "go on beginning. How, we do not know. That is God's business."