More than two millennia after the Holy Family was denied a room at the inn and Jesus was born in a manger, war once again renders his birthplace in the Holy Land inhospitable, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis condemned the Israeli military's killing of two Christian women sheltering at a Catholic parish in Gaza and an attack on a convent, noting that in the current fighting "unarmed civilians are targets for bombs and gunfire."

Pope Francis said he has decided to be buried in Rome's Basilica of St. Mary Major instead of in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican and that he has simplified the rites for a papal funeral.

At the brief meeting with participants in a seminar on the ethics of health care management, the pope said he was suffering from a "bronchial condition. Thank God it was not pneumonia," but he said it was a very serious bronchial infection.

"With great regret," Pope Francis has accepted his doctors' advice to not travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 1-3 and is looking at alternative ways the Vatican can participate in the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the director of the Vatican press office said.

Explaining that he had a "problem with inflammation of my lungs," Pope Francis led the recitation of the Angelus prayer from the chapel of his residence rather than from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square.

When Pope Francis visits Dubai in the United Arab Emirates Dec. 1-3 to address the opening of the UN Climate Change Conference, he will be the first pope ever to attend one of the global gatherings that began in 1995.

Pope Francis has invited a community of Benedictine nuns from Argentina to move into the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens, renewing the building's purpose as home to a cloistered community of women dedicated to supporting the pope's ministry with their prayer.

Pope Francis will travel to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates Dec. 1-3 to participate in the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the Vatican press office confirmed.

"War is a defeat," Pope Francis insisted as he called for prayers for peace in Israel and Palestine.

The Catholic Church, in pursuit of "pastoral prudence," should discern if there are ways of giving blessings to homosexual persons that do not alter the church's teaching on marriage, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis said the title of his new letter on the environment will be "Laudate Deum," (Praise God), a frequent refrain in several psalms, including Psalm 148, which tells the heavens and the angels and the sun and moon to praise the Lord.

Comments by a leading Argentinian presidential candidate may have dampened hopes that Pope Francis would soon visit his home country for the first time since becoming pope, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said.

The Synod of Bishops is not a television show or a parliamentary debate, and its discussions will not be open to the public or to reporters, Pope Francis said.

Russian clergy and lay Catholics were "caught by surprise" by the pope's remarks in a video call Aug. 25 to a youth gathering in St. Petersburg praising the country's past empire and urging young people to "never give up this heritage."