VATICAN CITY – The world's Benedictines offer precious gifts by providing quality education, quiet refuge in a hectic world and loving hospitality to anyone in need, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY – Be cautious about scientific data that offer to be the sole basis and single explanation for the differences between men and women, the Vatican newspaper said.

VATICAN CITY – Sex should be focused on love, not egotism or pleasure, according to the Vatican.

VATICAN CITY –Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on the family is an example of the "ordinary magisterium" – papal teaching – to which Catholics are obliged to give "religious submission of will and intellect," said an article in the Vatican newspaper.

DALLAS – The importance of the vocation of marriage and the family is at the core for the future of not only the Catholic Church, but of society, Bishop Kevin J. Farrell of Dallas said at a news conference Aug. 17.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis met privately at the Vatican with French President Francois Hollande, who said he felt it necessary to thank the Pope in person for his words after the slaying of a French priest and other terrorist attacks in France.

ROME – Pope Francis says he will not address sexual abuse allegations against the Vatican’s finance minister, Cardinal George Pell, until Australian judicial authorities complete their investigation.

VATICAN CITY – A papal think tank is convening a summit to tackle the threat to global stability posed by today's refugee crisis.

DURBAN, South Africa – The face of the AIDS epidemic has changed dramatically in recent years as scientists have created antiretroviral drugs that lower levels of the virus in the bloodstream, allowing those infected with HIV to live relatively normal lives.

VATICAN CITY – A mobile medical unit donated by the Vatican tours Rome's peripheries, offering free health care to those in need.

The advent of a new, professional, lay-led press office at the Vatican won’t sideline Canada’s Fr. Thomas Rosica, who has acted as a volunteer English-language attaché to the Holy See press office since Pope Benedict resigned.

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican and Sunni Islam's leading institution of higher learning have begun looking for ways to restart formal dialogue.

VATICAN CITY – In his first public address in almost a year, retired Pope Benedict XVI expressed his sincere gratefulness to Pope Francis, saying that his goodness "from the first moment of your election, in every moment of my life here, touches me deeply."

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican said it has had no direct contact with Auxiliary Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin of Shanghai, who apparently wrote a blog post in June that gave many people the impression he had recanted an earlier decision to abandon the Chinese government's Catholic Patriotic Association.

For the budding Catholic scientist, many pundits present two exclusive and diverging paths. A person can take the path of science, reason and logic, or the path of religion, dogma and the intangible.