Nation/World

The best way to usher in a truly “new” year is to stop waiting for things to get better on their own, and instead recognize what is essential and reach out now to help others, Pope Francis said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Dec. 27 that Title 42, a federal public health rule permitting immigration officials at the border to bar migrants seeking asylum from entry, would remain in effect until the high court hears legal challenges over the policy.

The archbishop’s meeting with the chaplains at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Resurrection took place the day after he participated in funeral services in Lviv for three Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle.

Most of the 18 Catholic missionaries murdered in 2022 were not carrying out high-risk missions when they were assassinated but were simply “immersed and submerged in the ordinariness of their lives and their apostolic work,” said the editor of Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news service.

After the funeral Mass, the coffin will be taken to St. Peter’s Basilica and then to the Vatican grotto for burial. It was widely reported before his death that his burial site would be in the chapel where St. John Paul II’s body rested until his beatification in 2011.

“To all those whom I have wronged in any way, I ask forgiveness from my heart,” Pope Benedict wrote.

When Pope Benedict came to the United States for a visit to Washington and New York spanning six days in mid-April 2008, some news accounts called the pace of his schedule “grueling.”

Retired Pope Benedict XVI’s life and papacy are well-documented in photographs.