On the return flight from Baku Francis explains why he condemns the gender theory in schools but also why homosexual people should be accompanied and “brought closer to the Lord”: “This is what Jesus would do today”. The Pope talked about an occasion in the Vatican when he received a girl who had had a sex change. India and Bangladesh are on the list of places he is to visit. “I would like to go to China but arrangements need to be made quickly”.

At his meeting with the country’s authorities, the Pope urged them to “open up new avenues that lead to lasting agreements and peace”

No stone must be left unturned in efforts to reach peace. In his speech to political authorities, Francis referred indirectly to the Nagorno Karabach conflict, without actually naming the contested region that both Azerbaijan and Armenia lay claim to and is occupied by troops from Yerevan. Since the conflict that took place in the 1990s, peace negotiations have been underway under the aegis of the Minsk Group.

In his off-the-cuff address to religious and seminarians in Georgia, the Pope said: “Marriage is not being destroyed with arms but with ideas. There are ideological colonisations taking place. The gender theory is a big enemy”.

“Today there is a world war aimed at destroying marriage,” Francis said today, addressing religious and seminarians at the Church of the Assumption in Tbilisi. But his most powerful words were in response to the testimony of a mother, Irina, who mentioned the gender theory.

The Pope stressed this during his second meeting with the head of the Orthodox Church in Svetyskhoveli Cathedral. The Patriarch, meanwhile, told Francis that he has “immense respect for him”.

This afternoon, Francis recited a prayer during his meeting with the Chaldean community in the presence of Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako and a group of refugees: “let the peoples so wearied by bombing experience the joy of your resurrection”

Francis and Patriarch Ilia II embraced during the meeting at the Patriarchal Palace and the Pope said: May the saints of this country encourage us “to put the Gospel before all else and to evangelize as in the past, even more so, free from the restraints of prejudice and open to the perennial newness of God”

In his address to political authorities in Tbilisi the Pope invited all to dialogue, which is all the more necessary “in the present historical moment with no shortage of violent extremism that manipulates and distorts civic and religious principles, and subjugates them to the dark designs of domination and death”. Georgia’s president, Margvelashvili, thanked him for the support of the Holy See and addressed very tough words to Russia, in reference to the Abkhazia and South Ossetia questions

Remarkable stories of how refugees who lost everything are now rebuilding their lives from scratch have emerged from Iraq.
There are many Christians among the many thousands of Iraqis and Syrians living in displacement camps in Iraq after fleeing Islamic State, according to World Watch Monitor which reports on Christian persecution around the world.

It is estimated that 3.3 million Iraqis have been displaced within their own country. Nearly 100,000 have sought refuge in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, since June.

But despite being bombed, schools are rebuilt and remain open: “We are responsible for pupils, no matter what”.

The martyr city’s Maronite archbishop says “some are urging Christians in the Middle East to leave given that there are so few of them. It’s not worth it, leave. But there needs to be a Christian presence in the place where faithful have been present for millennia.