Pope Francis called on divided Christians to overcome their doctrinal differences and walk together in love, expressing hope especially for greater unity between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Pope Francis’ envoy for peace in Ukraine, returned to Moscow in mid-October for meetings with Russian government officials and leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Before the standing-room-only congregation gathered in Trenton’s St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral for the first statewide Mass for Life, Bishop David M. O’Connell framed his homily around the words “Duty to Protect” when it comes to protecting all human life, especially “the child in their mother’s womb, the child in the mother’s arms and beyond.

You don’t need to attack a candidate to explain why this policy that he has proposed, or that action that her administration has taken, doesn’t align with Catholic teaching.

Although purgatory is not exactly a “punishment” in the way we would tend to use the term today, traditionally purgatory has been understood to involve a degree of suffering.