The prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity said in an interview that “Benedict XVI is above all my favorite theologian and then my favorite pope.”

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the dicastery’s prefect since 2010, said that “Pope Benedict was a scholar, he focused on the content of the faith. Pope Francis focused more on relationships and encounters. With Pope Leo, it is still too early to say exactly where he will emphasize.”

Cardinal Koch added that when Pope Francis’s spontaneity “went a bit wrong, then of course it was rather difficult—he didn’t always achieve the good goal he wanted to achieve.”

The Vatican’s structural budget deficit fell from 83.5 million euros in 2023 ($97.2M) to less than 44.5 million euros ($51.8M) in 2024, according to recently released financial statements.

The Holy See’s budget as a whole had a surplus of 1.6 million euros ($1.9M) because of donations and investments.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, one of the two pro-prefects of the Dicastery for Evangelization, told Asian cardinals, bishops, and lay leaders that “we need more wise people, pilgrims who seek, listen, learn, and worship. We need less Herod, trapped in fear, power, and despair.”

Cardinal Tagle was the keynote speaker at the Great Pilgrimage of Hope, a gathering held in Penang, Malaysia, and organized by the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. Ten cardinals, 104 bishops, and some 900 lay leaders took part in the gathering.

Father Gabriel Romanelli, the pastor of Gaza’s sole Catholic parish, pleaded for prayers and material support for Gaza as Christmas approaches.

The priest told Aid to the Church in Need that “the world should know that there are over two million people here who have nothing and need everything.” The parish continues to house 450 people.

The chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace wrote a letter of solidarity to the bishop of Kontagora, Nigeria, following the kidnapping of 315 students and teachers from a Catholic school there.

“This Advent, we offer our prayers for our Nigerian brothers and sisters, in Niger state and elsewhere, who have been violently separated from their loved ones, and who await their return,” Bishop A. Elias Zaidan wrote in his letter to Bishop Bulus Dauwa Yohanna. “Together, we pray for peace, security, and solidarity among all Nigerians, and for the particular care and protection of the nation’s young people.”

A Vatican diplomat welcomed positive aspects of a new UN document on human trafficking, but expressed reservations about its “problematic language.”

Msgr. Marco Formica, counselor at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, expressed reservations about the document’s references to surrogacy, “sexual and reproductive health-care services,” and gender. The document, the 2025 Political Declaration on the Implementation of the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 24.

The Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe recently hosted a three-day meeting on “Nostra Aetate, 60 Years On: Perspectives on Catholic-Muslim Dialogue.”

Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald, M Afr, delivered the keynote address. Themes of the meeting included “Christian-Muslim Relations in Germany” and “Interreligious Dialogue and Youth.”

Nostra Aetate, issued in 1965, is the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.

Italian Catholic and Orthodox prelates gathered in Venice yesterday to mark the 60th anniversary of the joint declaration of Pope St. Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople. The declarations lifted the mutual excommunications pronounced by their predecessors at the beginning of the East-West Schism (1054).

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi (president of the Italian Episcopal Conference), Patriarch Francesco Moraglia of Venice, and Metropolitan Polykarpos (the Greek Orthodox primate of Italy) took part in the commemoration.

In an editorial written on the Pope’s final day in Lebanon, a leading Vatican spokesman drew attention to the connection between the Pontiff’s initial homily in May and his apostolic journey to Turkey and Lebanon: the theme of disappearing so that Christ may remain.

Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, also offered his own commentary on that theme:

To “disappear so that Christ may remain” does not mean withdrawing into inwardness, building closed communities of the “perfect,” or chasing dreams of power and greatness based on numbers while forgetting God’s logic, which is shown in littleness. To “disappear so that Christ may remain” means becoming instruments—despite our limitations—of that boundless love of God that embraces every human heart without distinction, bending down to the least, the oppressed, and those who suffer.

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