VATICAN CITY -- The saints were flesh-and-blood people whose lives included real struggles and joys, and whose holiness reminds all the baptized that they, too, are called to be saints, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY -- Members of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon asked that women be given leadership roles in the Catholic Church, although they stopped short of calling for women deacons.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis apologized that two men entered a church near the Vatican, took controversial statues and tossed them into the Tiber River.

VATICAN CITY -- Too often Catholics know what is going on in their neighbor's house but pay little or no attention to the normal spiritual struggles going on in their own hearts and souls, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY -- Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna said that as a European member of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, his first task is to listen and his second task is to examine ways his lifestyle and that of his community contribute to the suffering of the Amazonian people.

ROME -- More than a half century after a group of bishops at the Second Vatican Council made a solemn pledge to live a simple lifestyle close to their people, a group of participants from the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon signed a new pact in the Catacombs of Domitilla.

VATICAN CITY -- Every Christian is called to be a missionary, sharing the good news of salvation in Christ and making disciples for him, not for oneself or one's clique of like-minded believers, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis and members of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon repeatedly vowed to support, defend and accompany the region's indigenous people.

ROME -- As the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon heard pleas to defend the rights of the region's indigenous people and of the land they hold sacred, indigenous leaders from Canada and the United States came to Rome to support them.