Pope Francis on the feast of the Epiphany lamented the sharp division among Catholics of differing views, saying believers must imitate the three wise men in putting God at the centre of their lives, rather than their own ideas of the faith.
Speaking to attendees of his Jan. 6 Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope said that as members of the church, “instead of splitting into groups based on our own ideas, we are called to put God back at the center.”
“We need to abandon ecclesial ideologies to find the meaning of holy mother church, the ecclesial attitude. Ecclesial ideologies no, ecclesial vocation yes,” he said, saying, “The Lord, not our own ideas or our own projects,” must be the focus.
“Let us set out anew from God; let us seek from him the courage not to lose heart in the face of difficulties, the strength to surmount all obstacles, the joy to live in harmonious communion,” he said.Focusing on three aspects of the biblical narrative of the Magi, Francis noted that they are described as having their “eyes are raised to the heavens.”

Adaptation of book by Shûsaku Endô, who wrote the source novel for 2016’s Silence, is understood to be set mostly in the present day
Martin Scorsese is to follow up his triumphant true-crime epic Killers of the Flower Moon with an 80-minute film about Jesus designed to “take away the negative[s] … associated with organised religion”.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Scorsese explained the thinking behind the project, an adaptation of A Life of Jesus by writer Shûsaku Endô (a Japanese Catholic whose 1966 novel Silence was previously adapted by Scorsese). Scorsese said he and his writing collaborator Kent Jones had finished the screenplay and were “swimming in inspiration” for a film reportedly set largely in the present day that “focus[es] on Jesus’s core teachings in a way that explores the principles but doesn’t proselytise”.
Scorsese said: “I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organised religion.”
The director, 81, added: “Right now, ‘religion’, you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life – even in rejecting it. Don’t dismiss it offhand. That’s all I’m talking about.”
Scorsese said he was preparing to shoot the film in 2024, having been inspired to begin work on it after meeting Pope Francis in 2023 and participating in a conference title The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination, organised by Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica. At the time Scorsese told the press: “I have responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.”
Scorsese has a significant track record with films with overt religious themes. His 1988 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ triggered worldwide controversy and protests for its depiction of an alternative timeline for Jesus’s life, while Silence, released in 2016, portrayed the struggles of Jesuit priests persecuted for their religion in 17th-century Japan. In 1997 Scorsese also released Kundun, a biographical film about the Dalai Lama.

Amid a broad spectrum of reactions unleashed by Fiducia Supplicans, a new Vatican document permitting non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples, Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church has become the first eastern communion to declare explicitly that the document does not apply outside the Latin Church.
“On the basis of canon. 1492 of the CCCC this Declaration concerns purely the Latin Church and has no legal force for the faithful of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Church, in a Dec. 22 statement.
Shevchuk was referring to a provision of the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, which states: “Laws enacted by the supreme authority of the Church, in which the passive subject is not expressly indicated, affect only the Christian faithful of the Eastern Churches insofar as they treat matters of faith or morals or declarations of divine law, or these Christian faithful are explicitly included in these laws, or they grant a favour which contains nothing contrary to the Eastern rites.”

Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, issued this reflection in support of the Holy Father’s recent remarks to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, which included a specific mention of the harms of surrogacy.
“Pope Francis strongly condemned the practice of surrogacy calling it ‘a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child.’ He emphasized that a child is a gift and as such can ‘never (be) the basis of a commercial contract.’ Surrogacy represents the commodification and instrumentalization of a woman’s body, treating her as a ‘carrier’ rather than a human person. And just as troubling is the fact that the child is reduced to terms of buying and selling as an object of human trafficking.
“The commercialization of women and children in surrogacy is underlined by the belief that there is a right to have a child. The child becomes an object for the fulfillment of one’s desires instead of a person to be cherished. In this way, the genuine right of the child to be conceived through the love of his or her parents is overlooked in favor of ‘the right to have a child by any means necessary.’ We must avoid this way of thinking and answer the call to respect human life, beginning with the unborn child.

The episcopal conferences of Africa are united in the belief that “the extra-liturgical blessings proposed in the declaration Fiducia Supplicans cannot be carried out in Africa” without creating scandal.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambogo of Kinshasa, the president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) summarized the stands taken by the different bishops’ conferences of Africa in a January 11 statement. He reported:
The episcopal conferences generally prefer—each bishop remaining free in his diocese—not to offer blessing to same-sex couples.
The African bishops profess their “unwavering attachment to the Successor of Peter,” the cardinal said, but fear the “potential confusion and scandal” that could be caused by blessing couples in irregular unions. The Vatican’s declaration, he said, “has sown misconceptions and unrest in the minds of many lay faithful, consecrated persons and even pastors, and has aroused strong reactions.”
The rejection of blessings for irregular unions does not indicate a lack of pastoral care, the cardinal insisted. African bishops are committed to treating homosexual persons with “respect and dignity,” he said. “Clergy are encouraged to provide welcoming and supportive pastoral care, particular to couples in irregular situations.
The leaders of the French Catholic bishops’ conference have issued a statement encouraging priests to bless people “who humbly ask for God’s help,” but carefully avoided suggesting such blessings for couples.
The permanent council of the French episcopal conference issued its statement on January 10, evidently responding to the earlier statement from nine French bishops who announced that they would not authorize blessings for same-sex couples. The conference statement called for an “unconditional and merciful welcome” of those who seek blessings. But after mentioning the need to provide pastoral care for couples living in irregular unions, the statement refers to blessings for individuals.