VATICAN CITY - A day after signaling a warmer embrace of gays and lesbians and divorced Catholics, conservative cardinals hit back strongly Oct. 14, with one insisting that an abrupt about-face on Church teaching is “not what we are saying at all.”

OTTAWA - The president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has been appointed to the commission preparing the final pastoral message of the Synod on the family.

VATICAN CITY - Missionaries do enormous good for the world and the church by bringing God's love to the far corners of the earth and by keeping the church healthy and fruitful, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY - In strikingly conciliatory language on situations contrary to Catholic teaching, an official midterm report from the Synod of Bishops on the family emphasized calls for greater acceptance and appreciation of divorced and remarried Catholics, cohabitating couples and homosexuals.

WARSAW, Poland - Less than six months after St John Paul II was canonized, questions are being raised about a book of lectures he penned as a young priest in his Polish homeland.

VATICAN CITY - Meeting Catholics from Pope Paul VI's home diocese, Brescia, Pope Francis said his predecessor's witness "nourishes within us the flame of love for Christ, love for the Church and the drive to proclaim the Gospel to the people of today with mercy, patience, courage and joy."

Senior Catholic leaders meeting at the Vatican are deep into passionate debates about how the Church can respond to the realities of modern family life, yet at the same time they have repeatedly stressed that they are not going to alter long-standing doctrines, such as the teaching on divorce and remarriage.

Although I grew up in a loving, safe and nurturing family and community, one of the dominant memories of my childhood and teenage years is that of being restless and somehow discontent. My life always seemed too small, too confined, a life away from what was important in the world. I was forever longing to be more connected to life and I feared that other people didn’t feel that way and that I was somehow singular and unhealthy in my restlessness. 

VATICAN CITY - The Church needs to find better ways to show how the Gospel message is a way of life meant to bring great joy to couples and families, and is not a burdensome set of rules aimed at exclusion, Archbishop Paul-André Durocher told the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family.

VATICAN CITY - A married couple from Brazil told Pope Francis and the Synod of Bishops that the Church should stop giving "contradictory advice" on birth control and help Catholics obey Church teaching against contraception.