July 24, 2023

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - Calling for “a new bond between the young and old,” Pope Francis marked the third annual World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly with an intergenerational Mass Sunday in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Old age is a “blessed time,” the pope affirmed in his homily, “for it is the season to be reconciled, a time for looking tenderly at the light that has shone despite the shadows, confident in the hope that the good wheat sown by God will prevail over the weeds with which the devil has wanted to plague our hearts.” Sunday marked the first time Pope Francis presided over the special papal Mass since initiating the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly in 2021. The celebration is now held on the fourth Sunday of July — the Sunday closest to the July 26 feast of Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus. Joining some 6,000 grandparents and older people at the liturgy were young people bound for World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, which begins August 1. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254873/pope-francis-celebrates-world-day-of-grandparents-and-the-elderly Pope Francis met with Doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, this morning in a private Vatican audience, the Holy See’s press office announced. No additional details were provided regarding the meeting. Containment of the COVID-19 outbreak had been a major focal point of WHO, the health agency of the United Nations, over the past three years. The Holy See donated to WHO’s emergency fund for medics on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254876/pope-meets-with-head-of-world-health-organization The Vatican has commissioned a new investigation of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (Sodality of Christian Life), a lay society of apostolic life founded in P