VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis used his weekly audience Dec. 10 to challenge media reports of “clashes between factions” at the recent bishops’ Synod on family issues.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican City prosecutor has opened an investigation into possible embezzlement by two former top officials at the Institute for the Works of Religion, more commonly called the Vatican bank.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis recognized the miracles needed for the canonization of two Palestinian nuns and of a French woman who founded a religious order.

OTTAWA - Catholic apologist Tim Staples used to love stumping Catholics with Bible verses in the days he was a Pentecostal, until he met a Catholic who stumped him.

VATICAN CITY - Gay marriage was never on the agenda at the recent Synod of Bishops on the Family and the subject “did not cross our minds,” Pope Francis said in a new headline-grabbing interview.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis said the Catholic Church must find new ways to integrate the divorced and civilly remarried in the life of the church and to make it easier for Catholic families to accept their homosexual members.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis said he was pleased that five of the 30 members of the International Theological Commission are women, but the body that advises the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as the Church in general, needs more women theologians.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis told authorities from the Dominican Republic that the “truth” must prevail in the investigation of a former Vatican ambassador who was convicted and defrocked for abusing teenage boys in the Caribbean country.

VATICAN CITY - During the Year of Consecrated Life, all Catholics are called to thank God for the gifts members of religious orders have given the Church and the world, to join them in prayer and find practical ways to support them and their ministries, Pope Francis said.