Calling for the gathered prelates to be meek, faithful, close to their flocks and tender, and to pay attention to both the big and small events of life so people can “savour the presence of Jesus alive in our midst,” Pope Francis created 20 new cardinals Saturday, including 16 eligible to vote for the next pontiff.
“To us, who in the church have been chosen from among the people for a ministry of particular service, it is as if Jesus is handing us a lighted torch and telling us: ‘take this; as the Father has sent me so I now send you’,” Francis told the cardinals. “In this way, the Lord wants to bestow on us his own apostolic courage, his zeal for the salvation of every human being, without exception.”
Francis spoke to the prelates of the “fire” that Jesus “came to bring the earth, a fire that the Holy Spirit kindles in the hearts, hands and feet of all those who follow him.” God himself, Francis said, is a “powerful flame” that “purifies, regenerates, and transfigures all things.”
But there is also a slow-burning fire, the pope said, that of the “charcoal,” which makes God’s presence warm and nourishing for everyday life.
The “fire” that comes from “presence,” he said, was once experimented and shared by Saint Charles de Foucauld, a poor hermit Francis declared a saint earlier this year. He “lived for years in a non-Christian environment, in the solitude of the desert, staking everything on presence: the presence of the living Jesus, in the word and in the Eucharist, and his own presence, fraternal, amicable and charitable,” the Pope said.
Francis listed several examples of that charcoal fire that is present in the “small” things, such as the consecrated who live in the “quiet and enduring fire in their work-place, in interpersonal relationships, in small acts of fraternity. It is also in the unassuming ministry of a parish priest, in the Christian married couples and their “homemade” prayers, and in the elderly, representing “the hearth of memory, both in the family and the life of the community.”
“How important is the fire of the elderly!” he said. “Around it families unite and learn to interpret the present in the light of past experiences and to make wise decisions.”

Pope Francis  led a number of major events at the end of August, starting with the creation of 20 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Inducting the appointees into the College of Cardinals at an ordinary public consistory Aug. 27, the Pope will give each new cardinal: a scarlet biretta — the “red hat” — whose colour signifies a cardinal’s willingness to shed his blood for the faith; a gold ring, a sign of their special bond with the church of Rome; and a scroll testifying to his new office and containing the name of his titular church in Rome.
On Aug. 28, the Pope will leave Rome for L’Aquila, 55 miles east of the capital, where he is scheduled to open a seven-centuries-old celebration of forgiveness and meet with the families of those who died in a 2009 earth-quake.
Back in Rome, the Pope  then hold an important closed-door assembly with the College of Cardinals Aug. 29-30.
All the world’s cardinals have been invited to attend the consultative session to reflect on the apostolic constitution “Praedicate evangelium” (Preach the Gospel) on the reform of the Roman Curia — a project that has been an important focus of this pontificate.
The Pope will then end the day Aug. 30 with Mass with all the new cardinals and the College of Cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Pope convening the world’s cardinals in Rome offers a rare chance for the College of Cardinals to get to know each other and to serve as a consultative body for the Pope.
With 20 new members inducted into the College of Cardinals Aug. 27, Pope Francis will bring up to 132 the number of cardinal electors, and the college as a whole will have 226 members.
Some of the significant characteristics of the college after the Aug. 27 consistory can be seen in numbers:
— The college is elderly. The average age of cardinals today is 78, and the average age among the cardinal electors is 72. Even though nine electors are under the age of 60 and one is 48 years old, nearly three-quarters of the electors are 70 and older. Almost 41% of the entire college is over the age of 80.
— The college is international. Today there are more than 90 countries represented in the entire college and 71 countries among the electors. That’s a notable increase from 2005, when all 117 eligible cardinal electors came from 53 countries.

Bishop Rolando Álvarez is under house arrest in Nicaragua’s capital Managua after being detained by police August 19 in a pre-dawn raid.
Bishop Álvarez had been confined to his residence for two weeks along with five priests, a seminarian, and a cameraman of a religious television channel. The priests and cameraman have reportedly been put in prison in the capital now, while the Bishop is under house arrest. A police statement said authorities had been waiting for several days for what they called a “positive communication” from the Diocese of Matagalpa, which had not been forthcoming. No formal charges have been announced.

Shia LaBeouf, an actor known for his roles in such movies as “Transformers” and “Fury,” made headlines this week for the personal details he shared about how his on-screen portrayal of Padre Pio led him to a newfound love of the Catholic faith.
In an 80-minute-long inter-view with Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and Word on Fire ministries, LaBeouf spoke at length about his appreciation of the works of St. Augustine and Thomas Merton, his devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass, the peace he feels when he prays the rosary, and his experience receiving the Holy Eucharist for the very first time. “I start feeling a physical effect from it,” he said of going to Communion. “I start feeling a reprieve and it starts feeling, like, regenerative, and [I] start enjoying it to such a degree I don’t want to miss it, ever.”
Though revelatory — and perhaps surprising, coming from a major Hollywood star — the interview didn’t conclusively answer a question many of his Catholic fans are asking: Has Shia LaBeouf formally “converted to Catholicism,”

South Korea has broken its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, according to official figures released Wednesday, as the country struggles to reverse its years-long trend of declining births.
The country’s fertility rate, which indicates the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, sunk to 0.81 in 2021 — 0.03% lower than the previous year, according to government-run Statistics Korea.
To put that into perspective, the 2021 fertility rate was 1.6 in the United States and 1.3 in Japan, which also saw its lowest rate on record last year. In some African countries, where fertility rates are the highest in the world, the figure is 5 or 6.
South Korea’s birth rate has been dropping since 2015, and in 2020 the country recorded more deaths than births for the first time — meaning the number of inhabitants shrank, in what’s called a “population death cross.”
And as fertility rates drop, South Korean women are also having babies later in life. The average age of women that gave birth in 2021 was 33.4 — 0.2 years older than the previous year, according to the statistics agency.