Pope Francis is constantly following what is happening in Gaza, reaching out to the small Christian community in the Strip by telephone.
Parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli told Vatican News about two phone calls he has received from the Pope since  October 7. Fr. Romanelli is currently in Bethlehem and in constant contact with the faithful of his parish.
“The Pope called me a few minutes ago”, he said. “He expressed his closeness and offered his prayers.”
Fr. Romanelli said he “thanked him for his call for a ceasefire and a stop to all violence, all terrorism and all war.”
The Pope, he added, “wanted to show his closeness, and now he was going to call the community directly with my vicar helping people who are refugees in the parish.”

Christianity remains the most common religion among Asian Americans despite an overall decline in the number of people following religions, says the latest Pew survey.
“Despite recent declines, Christianity is still the most common religion among Asian Americans,” said the survey report released by Pew Research Center on Oct. 11.
According to the report, around 34 percent of Asian American adults identified their religion as Christianity in 2023, down from 42 percent in 2012.
Among the respondents who said they were Christians, around 17% were Catholics and 16% were Protestants. One-tenth of Asian Americans were Buddhists and Hindus, while Muslims were reported at six percent.
Other Asian religious groups including Daoists, Jains, Jews, and Sikhs together made up around four percent of all Asian American adults. Six Asian origin groups–Chinese, Filipino, Indi-an, Japanese, Korean, and Viet-namese Americans – made up around 81% of the roughly 7,000 Asian Americans surveyed.
The survey also looked at the various largest subgroups within Christianity, both Protestants and Catholics. The result showed an overall decline in numbers in 2023, compared to the previous survey conducted in 2012.
For example, Protestants had declined to 16 % in 2023 from 22 % in 2012. The Evangelicals who were included within the Protestant subgroup also showed a decline to 10 percent from 13 percent for the same period.
“The Catholic share is more stable,” the report said.
Followers of Catholicism were reported to have declined from 19 % in 2012 to 17 % in 2023.
The survey also analyzed how Asian Americans identify themselves as “close” to Christianity despite being non-adherent to any specific religion.
“Many who do not identify with a specific religion still say they consider themselves close to the religious or philosophical traditions that are common in their country of ancestry,” the report said.
Around 18% of Asian Americans, while not identifying as Christians, said that they feel “close to” Christianity “aside from religion” for reasons such as family background or culture.
In total, 40 % of Asian American adults express a connection to one or more groups that they do not claim a religious identity.

Two children scribbled petitions to St. Gabriele dell’Addolorata in the vast sanctuary where the young saint is venerated in this central Italian mountain village. Andrea, 6, asked for blessings for his family and pets. Sofia, 9, gave thanks for winning a dance competition.
Their parents bring them here often, as their father’s own family did, and consider themselves better Catholics than many. The mother, Carmela Forino, even says a prayer for forgiveness when she hears someone utter a common blasphemy on the sanctuary esplanade.
But they rarely go to Mass and don’t receive Communion because they are not married, thus shunning two sacraments the Catholic Church considers foundational.
“I practice where I want. Every morning I pray on my own,” Forino said in the sanctuary room filled with votive offerings, from baby bibs to sports jerseys, left by 2 million annual visitors to San Gabriele. “One has to believe in something, right? You do what you feel in your heart. You can’t require me to go to Mass on Sundays.”
Elsewhere in deeply secular Western Europe, the “nones” — those rejecting organized religion — are growing fast. In Italy, long considered the cradle of the Catholic faith, most people retain a nominal affiliation, steeped in tradition but with little adherence to doctrine or practice.
According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, 78% of Italians profess to be Catholic. But the Italian statistics agency, ISTAT, says only 19% attend services at least weekly while 31% never attend.

Climate activists across the globe have thanked Pope Francis for his new exhortation on the environment titled Laudate Deum, published ahead of a major UN climate summit, calling the text “prophetic” and saying action is needed now more than ever.
Benoit Halgand, co-founder of the French youth organizations “For an Ecological Awakening” and “Struggle and Contemplation,” during an Oct. 5 press conference at the Vatican warned that “mankind is on the verge of destroying its very conditions of existence.”
Amid what he said is “all the skeptical, relativistic and techno-solutionist rhetoric” about the climate issue, Halgand voiced gratitude for “Pope Francis’ clear-sighted and firm reminder of the urgency of climate and social issues.”
He highlighted what he said were three “prophetic” aspects of the pope’s new apostolic exhortation on the environment, which includes a strong rejection of skepticism about global warming and the consequences of human intervention in the environment, including those within the Church.
Francis also criticized wealthy nations, especially the United States, for disproportionately causing the emissions that scientists believe drive global warming.
Pope rips climate skepticism, faults US for emissions in new eco-manifesto
In his remarks, Halgand praised the exhortation’s call for “a strong civil society and a political response to the ecological crisis,” as well as its insistence on the urgency of continuing to move away from fossil fuels.

Margaret Karram is an Arab Christian who grew up in Haifa and has headed the Focolare Movement for the past two years. Taking part in the Synod roundtables in the Paul VI Hall, she has been following recent events in her homeland torn by the war between Israel and Hamas.
Speaking about her own turmoil, she said: “A short while ago, a Jewish friend called me. She told me: From now on I have decided that I will pray at the same time as my Muslim friends. Even if there are many things that divide us, I will do it with a deep heartbreak because I know that, at this moment, I am united with them, at least in prayer.”
This morning, the ongoing tragedy in Israel and Gaza dominated the prayer that starts the day at the Synod. Cardinal Louis Sako led it. As patriarch of Baghdad, he comes from another land wounded by war over the past 20 years, where the wounds of Iraqi Christians have reopened in recent weeks.
Margaret Karram and Sister Caroline Jarjis, a nun from Baghdad, witnesses representing Eastern Churches and the Middle East, made the invocation for peace reading a passage from the Gospel in Arabic. Their testimony today was also at the heart of the daily briefing with the journalists present at the Synod.
“I asked myself what am I doing here?” said the Focolare president. “Should I not do something else to promote peace at this time? But then I said to myself: Here too I can join the Pope Francis’s call and everyone’s prayer.
“With my brothers and sisters from every corner of the world we can ask God for the gift of peace. Many steps can be taken for peace, but I believe in the power of prayer. Moreover, the Gospel in today’s liturgy also says so: Knock and the door will be opened to you, ask and you will receive.”

On the opening day of the Synod on Synodality, a leading official of the process urged participants to read “the signs of the times” in order to “discover a grammar of synodality for our time.”
“Just like the grammar of our languages changes as they develop, so does the grammar of synodality: It changes with time,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the 16th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, in prepared remarks at the start of the afternoon session.
Discovering a new grammar of synodality, a term that means “journeying together,” may be the stated goal of the synod, which will continue throughout the month and conclude with a final assembly in October 2024. But on its opening day, synod leaders also highlighted the many ways in which the current gathering breaks the mold of past Synods of Bishops.
Cardinal Mario Grech noted that, for “the first time,” the inclusion of non-bishops in the synod, including “laymen and laywomen, religious men and women, deacons, and presbyters, who are no longer ‘exceptions to the norm,’ but full members of the assembly.”

Pope Francis’s new doctrine chief has said he believes a revised structure for his department is working well, and now includes a “democratic system” for handling whatever queries or complaints might arrive that prohibits him from making unilateral decisions.
New Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close papal friend and ghostwriter who recently became prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), spoke to journalists Saturday after getting his red hat from Pope Francis alongside 20 other prelates from around the world.
Asked about his past use of social media and how he plans to engage any direct queries he receives, including those from “reactionaries” who take issue with his theology, Fernández acknowledged that in the past, “I was used to responding directly through Facebook, but now I have to take a little more care of how I move.”
“If queries arrive to me or questions…I cannot respond to them directly. I have to ask that they send them formally to the dicastery so that they follow their course,” he said, saying, “I am going to say that, it can call the attention of some people, but there is a very democratic system for dealing with those issues.”
When queries of any kind arrive – whether they be theological questions, doctrinal matters, or even dubia, or doubts, like those presented to the pope ahead of the upcoming Synod of Bishops on Synodality – “there is a series of steps; it passes by the team, it pass through the (weekly) meetings, then it passes by the team of member-bishops, and after it goes to the pope,” Fernández said.
“Then the pope can sometimes ask us to study it better. So, it’s not that a prefect can just make his own decisions,” he said.
Fernández, who recently met with both the disciplinary and doctrinal sections of the DDF, said he believes the department’s new structure, established as part of Francis’s recent reform of the Roman Curia, is working well, and allows more time to deal with matters that come up.

Pope Francis and the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem called for peace after Israel declared “war” following a major attack by Hamas fighters over the weekend.
The pope said at the end of a public address on Sunday he is following the violence “with apprehension and sorrow,” and issued an appeal to “please stop weapons attacks!”
The head of the Catholic Church in Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, called for a de-escalation of the situation in a statement Oct. 7.
“The continuing bloodshed and declarations of war remind us once again of the urgent need to find a lasting and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in this land,” he said.
A series of rocket attacks and incursions on Israel from Hamas militants had reportedly killed hundreds and wounded many between Saturday and Sunday morning.
The surprise attacks began early on the morning of Oct. 7, the start of the observance of the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah.
Israel reacted to the attacks by fighting back in southern Israel and launching airstrikes in Gaza. Israeli military official Daniel Hagari told reporters Sunday morning that “hundreds of terrorists” had been killed during fighting in Gaza and southern Israel, the Associated Press reported.

Following a two-year period of preparation, the first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops opened on October 4 with Mass in St. Peter’s Square, an Italian-language greeting by Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Sedrak, an address by Pope Francis, and an Italian-language report by Cardinal Mario Grech, before the longer introductory talk delivered by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ.
The official theme of the Synod, which will continue with a second session in October 2024, is “For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.”
“Let the centrality of Christ be the guiding thread of this Synod,” said Patriarch Sedrak, one of the Synod’s presidents-delegate, who preside over the deliberations in the place of Pope Francis. “May He be the Alpha and Omega of our discussions, may He be the light that enlightens us our debates, may He be the final goal of all our efforts. Only in this way the Synod will be able to achieve his own goals.”

On October 9, participants in the first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops turned their attention to a new discussion topic: “How can we be more fully a sign and instrument of union with God and of the unity of all humanity?” An Eastern Orthodox prelate also told participants that the Synod he was witnessing in Rome “differs greatly” from the Eastern practice of synodality.
The first phase of the Synod (October 4-7) was devoted to a discussion of the Synod’s first module (For a synodal Church: An integral experience). The Synod’s second module (“Communion, participation, mission: Three priority issues for the synodal Church”) is divided into three topics:
· B1. A communion that radiates: How can we be more fully a sign and instrument of union with God and of the unity of all humanity?
· B2. Co-responsibility in Mission: How can we better share gifts and tasks in the service of the Gospel?
· B3. Participation, governance and authority: What processes, structures and institutions in a missionary synodal Church
The first session of the Synod concludes on October 29; the results of the Synod’s first session will form the agenda of the Synod’s second session in October 2024.
In the morning, participants gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy according to the Byzantine rite (CWN coverage). Patriarch Youssef Absi, the head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, presided at the liturgy, and Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, preached the homily.
Reflecting on the Lord’s words that “the harvest is great, but the laborers are few,” the Maronite Patriarch preached:
“We read in the Instrumentum laboris [working document] that in a synodal assembly Christ makes himself present and acts, transforms history and daily events, grants the Spirit that guides the Church to find a consensus on how to walk together toward the Kingdom and how to help humanity move forward in the direction of unity,” Cardinal Patriarch al-Rahi continued.