Can prayer change the direction of history? Are prayer and acts of penance capable of preventing nuclear annihilation? Can prayers and penance increase our freedom? “Yes, yes and yes.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), on June 26, 2000, in reference specifically to the request of Our Lady of Fatima to pray and do penance “to save souls,” wrote: “The future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image [of terrible destruction and suffering] which the children saw is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be changed.

Francis in Ostia - takes everybody by surprise, shows up unannounced and like any other pastor he blesses the homes. He then jokingly apologizes for the inconvenience, reassuring however of having respected the condo's rule of silence.

Pope Francis and President Donald Trump will meet May 24 in the Vatican. And while Holy See watchers debate the possible topics and tone of their private conversation, it was the Holy Father who offered a clue on his own plans for engaging the new U.S. president, who has already crossed swords with the Church leader on immigration and climate change.

Interview with Republican Congressman Francis Rooney, a former US Ambassador to the Holy See.

President Donald Trump and Pope Francis are two of the most compelling figures on the world stage. Both were elected outsiders, both have shaken up their respective establishments and both have sought to build bottom-up movements with a message that is taken directly to the people.

But the pair also have radically different visions of the world while neither is afraid of confrontation.

Sixth Easter Sunday – Year A – May 21, 2017

The readings of the Bible impel me to reflect with you upon two things which are interior within us, two things that are mysterious and can be known only in their expression. One is love and the other is the Holy Spirit. Both cannot be really known in themselves; both are made real for us in their activity, in their expression, in their external manifestations that we bring into our lives in our responses to God’s love for us.

Echoing the words of his predecessor, Blessed Pope Paul VI, about the nature of Christ and the Church He founded: "it comes as no surprise to the Church that she, no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a 'sign of contradiction,'" Pope Francis said Wednesday that Jesus "was not one to adapt to the world," but came rather to transform it. Breitbart News has more on Pope Francis' remarks:

Interview with the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill: the Havana's Summit and the new phase of relations between Catholics and Russian Orthodox: today it is necessary to "narrate the Church not as a museum of medieval ideas"

The range of possible issues up for discussion during the May 24 tête-à-tête is vast.

Although Pope Francis said Saturday he will not be seeking to soften U.S. President Donald Trump's policies during their meeting next week, the encounter is doubtless a rare opportunity for a global moral voice to influence a leader who keeps an unusually tight circle of advisors.

The press conference on the return flight from Fatima. Francesco speaks of the apparitions in Herzegovina, and while opening to the first ones he expresses many doubts about the current ones. On Trump: “I do not judge before meeting him.” On Lefebvrians: “Relations are fraternal.” “I never granted clemency in a case of child abuse”.