The BBC reports that the head of the Roman Catholic Church stated that, in some cases, priests ought to be able to bless same-sex and “irregular” couples.

However, the Vatican has emphasised that blessings should not be incorporated into routine Church ceremonies or associated with civil unions or weddings.

It added that it continues to view marriage as between a man and a woman.

A Vatican document outlining the move was approved by Pope Francis on Monday.

Although the document itself states that priests must make decisions on a case-by-case basis, the Vatican said it should be a sign that “God welcomes all.”

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Church, while introducing the text, made it clear that the revised position does not confer official recognition to same-sex couples within the Catholic Church.

The declaration signifies a shift in tone, albeit without altering its stance. The Pope had in 2021 declared that priests are prohibited from bestowing blessings upon same-sex marriages, citing the belief that God cannot “bless sin”.

Within the Catholic Church, a blessing consists of a prayer or entreaty, typically recited by a minister, requesting that God provide favour to the individual or individuals receiving the blessing.

In October, Pope Francis hinted that he might be willing to see same-sex couples blessed by the Church.

According to the BBC, while the position of Church officials remained unclear, bishops in several countries had previously permitted priests to bless same-sex marriages.

Zelenskyy’s visit comes two weeks after the pope told reporters that he is engaged in a secret mission to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Since the start of the war on February 24, 2022, Zelenskyy has made regular appeals for the pope to visit the war-torn country. The pope has said he will visit Kyiv but only if he could travel to Moscow, as well, to make an appeal for peace.

Upon his arrival at the Vatican, Zelenskyy greeted the Pope at the door of the Vatican’s Pope Paul VI Hall, rather than the Apostolic Palace, which is traditionally used for meetings with heads of state.

“Thank you for this visit,” the pope said to Zelenskyy in Italian. “A great honor,” Zelenskyy replied in English, placing his hand over his heart.

The pope and the president met for 40 minutes behind closed doors, with Zelenskyy giving the pope a bullet-dented plate and a poster in the style of an icon titled “Loss.” The image memorialized the lives of children who died in the early days of the conflict.

In a tweet, Zelenskyy emphasized that he asked the pope to condemn Russian war crimes, writing that “there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor.”

He also said that he asked the Vatican to back Ukraine’s peace formula, which includes the withdrawal of Russian forces from the country, a restoration of all of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, Russian war reparations and postwar security guarantees for Ukraine.

The occasion is Zelenskyy’s second visit to the Vatican since being elected president of Ukraine in 2019. His last visit took place on Feb. 8, 2020, just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Doctors late Thursday reported a “marked improvement” in the condition of the pontiff, who was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Wednesday, and said he could be home “in the coming days”.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, told the Adnkronos news agency Friday that “based on the information I have, the pope will leave Gemelli tomorrow”.

He expressed hope that Francis would be able to preside over services for Holy Week and Easter, Christianity’s most important holiday, which begin with this weekend’s Palm Sunday celebrations.

The Vatican did not respond to requests for confirmation. A source earlier said that he had passed the night “peacefully”.

The pope’s admission to hospital, just weeks after he marked 10 years as head of the worldwide Catholic Church, has sparked widespread concern while also fuelling speculation about his future.

The Argentine, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has suffered increasing health issues in recent years, and it was his second stay in hospital since 2021.

He has repeatedly said he would consider stepping down if his health failed him, following the example of his predecessor Benedict XVI — but said in February that for now, he had no plans to quit.

Thousands of well-wishers are expected at Kinshasa’s Ndjili international airport to greet the 86-year-old pontiff’s plane, which is due to land around 3:00 pm local time (1400 GMT).

It is the first time since 1985 that a pope has visited DRC, a desperately poor country of close to 100 million people, 40 percent of whom are Catholic.

The six-day trip to DRC and South Sudan was originally planned for July 2022, but postponed due to the pontiff’s knee pain that has forced him in recent months to use a wheelchair.

Security concerns were also said to play a role, and the Vatican scrapped an original plan to visit Goma in DR Congo’s east, where dozens of armed groups operate.

“I greet with affection those beloved peoples who await me,” Pope Francis said after his Angelus prayer at St Peter’s Square on Sunday.

“These lands, situated in the centre of the great African continent, have suffered greatly from lengthy conflicts.”

He lamented “armed clashes and exploitation” in DR Congo, and said South Sudan, “wracked by years of war, longs for an end to the constant violence”.

Despite its vast mineral wealth, some two-thirds of DRC’s population live on less than $2.15 a day, while violence plagues the eastern provinces.

The Tutsi-led armed group M23, which Kinshasa alleges is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, has been conquering large swaths of territory in North Kivu province.

The region has also seen a wave of deadly attacks blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group the Islamic State claims as an affiliate, including a bomb blast at a Pentecostal church this month that killed 14 people.

Biden goes to weekly Mass regularly and keeps a picture of the pope behind his desk in the Oval Office.

He has said he is personally opposed to abortion but as an elected leader cannot impose his views.

But Conservative Catholic media and U.S. conservative bishops have criticised him for that stand, with some saying he should be banned from receiving communion, the central sacrament of the faith.

At the same time, supporters of abortion rights have been horrified by a new Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion.

Biden’s administration has challenged the law and the Supreme Court will hear the case next Monday.

It is not known if Biden and Pope Francis will discuss the abortion and communion disputes at their private meeting on Friday, they’re first since Biden took office.

“It’s clear that the pope does not agree with the president about abortion. He’s made that exceptionally clear,” Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore told Catholic News Service.

Asked about the U.S. communion debate last month, the pope told reporters abortion is “murder”.

But he also appeared to criticise U.S. Catholic bishops for dealing with the issue in a political rather than pastoral way.

“Communion is not a prize for the perfect…communion is a gift, the presence of Jesus and his Church,” the pope said.

Bishops should use “compassion and tenderness” with Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, he said.

Since his election in 2013 as the first Latin American pope, Francis has said that while the Church should oppose abortion it should not become an all-consuming battle in culture wars that detract attention from issues such as immigration and poverty.

In June, a divided conference of U.S. Roman Catholic bishops

voted to draft a statement on communion that some bishops say should specifically admonish Catholic politicians, including Biden.

The bishops, who went ahead despite a Vatican warning that it would sow discord rather than unity, will take up the issue again next month.

Catholics hold two of the three top offices in the United States – the other is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

But instead of uniting co-religionists, as the election of John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic president did in 1960, both Biden and Pelosi have come under attack by Church conservatives.

They increased their criticism of Biden this month when his administration challenged the Texas law.

While Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has not tried to stop Biden from receiving communion, the archbishop in Pelosi’s home city of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, has told his priests not to give it to her.

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a statement last week the meeting would cover “working together on efforts grounded in respect for fundamental human dignity”.

This would include ending the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling the climate crisis, and caring for the poor, she said.

Like Biden, the pope has urged everyone to get vaccinated and has issued numerous appeals to defend the environment by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Biden will attend the UN Climate Change summit in Glasgow and the pope is expected to send a message.

Many U.S. bishops are climate change sceptics who supported former President Donald Trump, with whom Pope Francis had numerous disagreements.

2,500-page landmark report was released on Tuesday, October 5, after more than two years of investigations by an independent commission. The commission found that an estimated 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church between 1950 to 2020, with an estimated 216,000 minors abused by priests and other clerics.

Reacting to the damning report, the pontiff expressed his ‘sadness’ for the victims as it emerged that nuns used crucifixes to rape girls during decades of abuse which was covered up by a ‘veil of silence.

Francis said during his weekly audience at the Vatican on Wednesday “There is, unfortunately, a considerable number I wish to express to the victims my sadness and pain for the trauma they have suffered. And also my shame, our shame, my shame, for the inability of the Church for too long to put them at the centre of its concerns. I pray and we all pray together – to you Lord the glory, to us the shame. This is the time for shame.’

He called on all bishops and religious superiors to take all actions necessary ‘so similar dramas are not repeated.’

The findings of the inquiry have prompted outrage as the Catholic Church in France and around the world faces a growing number of abuse claims and prosecutions.

Dealing with the avalanche of revelations about sexual abuse by clergy was one of the biggest challenges that Francis faced when he was elected pope in 2013. He declared an end to impunity and changed Vatican law to make reporting abuse mandatory, but victims have warned it is not enough.

Francis expressed his sorrow for the victims in a statement Tuesday issued through his spokesman, but his comments on Wednesday went further.

He urged the clergy to keep working to ensure such situations ‘are not repeated’, offering his support to French priests to face up to ‘this trial that is hard but healthy’. He also invited French Catholics to ‘assume their responsibilities to ensure that the Church is a safe home for all.

The report found that the ‘vast majority of victims were pre-adolescent boys from a variety of social backgrounds. Their abusers were mainly priests, bishops, deacons and monks. Eighty per cent of victims were young boys between the ages of 10 and 13, however many girls also suffered abuse, not only by priests but also by nuns.

A victim named ‘Marie’ testified that she was abused as an 11-year-old and that when she complained about the abuse to her parents they refused to believe a nun could do such a thing. The abuse continued for another year.

She recalls a nun who would choose a student from her class every day to help her with Mass.

‘I was 11 and looked 9. She would choose me once every two or three times,’ ‘Marie’ recalls.

‘She would take me to her office, lock the door, and then draw the curtains. After which she would put me on her knees to make me read the gospel according to Saint Paul or another saint, while she squeezed me with one hand to her chest and pulled down my panties with the other hand.

‘We were of course in pleated skirts and not in pants. It terrified me and paralyzed me. I was truly [a gift] for this nun… because she knew full well that she did not risk anything,’ Marie said.

‘Until the early 2000s, the Catholic Church showed a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims,’ commission chief Jean-Marc Sauve told a press conference that unveiled the nearly 2,500-page report.

They were ‘not believed or not heard’ and sometimes suspected of being ‘in part responsible for what happened, he deplored.

The Holy Father made the appeal at his usual Wednesday General Audience in the Vatican on Wednesday, September 29

The Pope called on the Federal Government to guarantee the safety of all citizens as he sent words of comfort and consolation to all Nigerians including the victims of the recent attacks in Madamai Abun village in Kaura Local Government of the Southern part of Kaduna State, where suspected Islamist militants allegedly ravaged the community, killed 34 persons and injured many.

The Pope stated “I learnt with pain the news of the armed attacks that took place last Sunday against the villages of Madamai Abun, in northern Nigeria. I pray for those who have died, for those who have been injured and for the entire Nigerian population, I hope that the safety of all citizens will always be guaranteed in the country.”

The pontiff said during the weekly Angelus at the Vatican “I join in the unanimous concern for the situation in Afghanistan. I ask all of you to pray with me to the God of peace so that the clamour of weapons might cease and solutions can be found at the table of dialogue. Only thus can the battered population of that countrymen, women, elderly and children – return to their own homes, and live in peace and security, in total mutual respect.”

His comments come as the Taliban was on the brink of total victory in Afghanistan on Sunday, with its fighters ordered to wait on the outskirts of the capital and the government conceding it was preparing for a “transfer of power”.

The pontiff left the Gemelli University Hospital for the Vatican in a car with darkened windows, the photographer said.

Francis had been admitted after suffering from a type of diverticulitis, an inflammation of pockets that develop in the lining of the intestine.

The Vatican initially said he would be in hospital for about a week, and the pope led the Angelus prayer from his hospital window on Sunday.

On Monday, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said he would stay for a “few more days”. Francis stayed in the same suite used by Pope John Paul II, who also leads the Angelus prayer from there. The Argentine pontiff temporarily ran a fever last week but a chest and abdomen scan and other tests revealed no particular abnormalities.

According to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, the pope had surgery for “colon diverticulitis,”

Diverticulitis is an inflammation caused when people develop small sacs in the walls of the colon. The sacs or pouches are called diverticuli. It’s usually symptomless, but can cause discomfort and, sometimes, bleeding.

The Holy See press office said in a statement “This afternoon his Holiness Pope Francis went to the Gemelli hospital — Rome — for a scheduled surgical intervention for asymptomatic stenotic diverticulitis. Surgery will be carried out by professor Sergio Alfieri. At the end of the surgery, a medical bulletin will be issued”