Jesuit Brother Bob Macke, a Vatican astronomer and meteorite expert, has built a custom device for studying material from the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.
Vatican
Pope Francis said he knows people wonder why he traveled close to 6,000 miles to Mongolia to visit a Catholic community of only 1,450 people.
In a land bordering both Russia and China, and having deep ties with both, Pope Francis told Mongolian leaders their country can play “a significant role in the heart of the great Asian continent and on the international scene,” particularly in peacemaking.
In a world suffering from an “epidemic of enmity,” Christians can offer healing by recognizing each person as a child of God and reaching out in friendship, said a top Vatican official, writing on behalf of Pope Francis.
On the feast of Mary’s assumption into heaven, Pope Francis entrusted to her people’s prayers for peace, especially in Ukraine.
The Gospel calls Christians to bring the elderly to the center of their lives and away from the margins of families, politics and financial markets that banish them as “unprofitable waste” in society, Pope Francis said. “Let it not happen that by pursuing the myths of efficiency and performance at full speed we become unable to slow down to accompany those who struggle to keep up,” he said in his homily at a Mass for World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in St. Peter’s Basilica July 23.
Treated to songs, gifts and a paper medallion designating him “hero,” Pope Francis visited children attending a summer camp at the Vatican. About 250 children of Vatican employees welcomed the pope, who greeted the children and counselors, and posed for pictures July 18. He spoke to the kids, who ranged in age from 5 to 13, and answered their questions, according to a report by Vatican News.
Pope Francis named 21 new cardinals, including U.S.-born Archbishop Robert F. Prevost, who took the helm at the Dicastery for Bishops in April, and French Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States.
Pope Francis has appointed more than 450 participants, including dozens of religious men and women and laypeople from around the world, to attend the first general assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality in October.
Pope Francis appointed his longtime theological adviser and fellow countryman Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández of La Plata, Argentina, to lead the Vatican’s doctrinal office, urging him in a public letter to expand the office’s focus beyond its reputation as a watchdog pursuing possible doctrinal errors and to promote the understanding and transmission of the faith.