Ric Burns’s splendid two-part PBS documentary, “Dante: Inferno to Paradise,” has brought Dante’s achievement beyond the groves of academe and into America’s living rooms.

“Human life is not a problem, it is a gift,” said Pope Francis at a meeting on Italy's longtime decline in births and population growth on May 10. “The problem is not how many of us there are in the world, but what kind of world we are building.”

Pope Francis today promulgated the decree, known as a “Bull of Indiction,” for the Jubilee Year 2025, which he will open in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24, 2024, and close on Jan. 6, 2026.

Pope Francis delivered his general audience today about the theological virtue of hope. Francis said that if Christians have hope for the future, it is because “Christ died and rose again and gave us His Spirit.”

In Venice, Pope Francis visits a Vatican-sponsored exhibition at a women’s prison, meets with inmates and presides at Mass.

Pope Francis wrote a letter of encouragement to parish priests, who were largely missing from the first synod session.