VATICAN CITY – "That's your bishop!" a woman shouted to Seamus McKelvey of Winnipeg, Manitoba, as he leaned in for an impromptu picture with three prelates posing for a professional portrait with St. Peter's Basilica in the background.

MANILA, Philippines – Remember what Jesus' cross stands for, and don't misuse the Bible to justify the death penalty, said the Philippines' Catholic bishops.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – After an outburst of attacks on property owned by foreign nationals in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, and neighboring Johannesburg, the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference justice and peace commission called for restraint.

OTTAWA – After years of seeing little progress toward peace in the Holy Land, Catholic bishops decided to send a more blunt message following their annual pilgrimage to the region.

YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast – Catholic bishops in Ivory Coast have launched a campaign of fasting and prayer for peace after a wave of army mutinies and civil service strikes.

TENT OF NATIONS, West Bank – Bishops from Europe and North America lauded this 100-year-old hilltop family farm southwest of Bethlehem as an example of the nonviolent resistance needed to oppose Israeli expansion onto Palestinian land.

NAIROBI, Kenya – As presidential elections approach in Somalia, the bishop who serves as apostolic administrator sees signs of hope, but he says changes are needed.

CARACAS, Venezuela – The Venezuelan bishops' justice and peace commission on Tuesday repudiated the murders of 12 young men by an operation of the Liberation of the People, a government security team meant to combat crime and homicide.

VATICAN CITY - On Friday Pope Francis stopped by a formation course for bishops on the new marriage nullity process, telling attendees that as bishops, and now as local judges in annulment cases, they must pursue the truth, but never exclude those whose marriages have failed.

Bishops in Alberta and the Northwest Territories issued what has been prosaically called a series of guidelines to deal with so-called medical aid in dying. In truth, the Vademecum for Priests and Parishes beautifully illuminates, and reminds readers, what it means to live a Catholic life.

MEXICO CITY - Pope Francis demanded forceful denunciations of drug violence in Mexico from the country's bishops, who have preferred timid pronouncements instead of speaking prophetically on a tragedy that has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past 10 years and left an another 25,000 Mexicans missing.

In his closing address at the Synod of Bishops on the Family, Pope Francis said the meeting of Church leaders was never intended to solve all the problems that afflict modern families. The Synod, he said, was a forum to study the family and assess its many challenges “fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand.”

VATICAN CITY - One of the most repeated themes during the Synod on the Family was the need for a more biblically based approach. The original working document for the Synod — the Instrumentum Laboris — came in for repeated and severe criticism for taking as its starting point sociological data rather than the Word of God.

The Synod is not over. Synod delegates may have returned home after three weeks of intense work that produced 94 paragraphs of advice to Pope Francis, including three vaguely worded paragraphs concerning communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and what sort of welcome the Church extends to gay Catholics. But that’s not the last word.

VATICAN CITY - If the Catholic Church did more to recognize and promote women it could help their status across society, said the Synod of Bishops on the Family.