An annulment system that gives answers faster and imposes fewer costs on those going to Church courts is a good thing. But if the process needs to become simpler, then marriage should be harder to get into.

The media is already abuzz about a leaked draft of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, but it will likely reiterate standard Catholic teaching. Potentially more newsy is the Vatican’s ongoing effort to clean house.

The left likes to look for the “root causes of poverty”. A better project would be looking for “the root causes of wealth”. It would be helpful if Catholic social teaching supported this project.

In advance of an expected Pope Francis encyclical on the environment, a Vatican conference released a document calling the mitigation of climate change a “moral and religious imperative.”

Pope Francis had a mandate to bring order to the Curia and peace to warring Church factions. Neither seems to be going very well just now.

The question of whether remarried Catholics can receive communion is quickly becoming the defining question in the Catholic church, and Bishops are picking sides.

The Pope did not say that all dogs go to heaven, but for a media convinced of its own account of this papacy, details sometimes seem beside the point.

Several recent stories show Pope Francis pursuing a reform agenda that is more nuanced, and more in continuity with the work of his predecessors, than many realize.

Many South American Catholics are leaving the Church, largely for Protestant denominations. That’s a different challenge than the one facing the Church in Europe, and it may be Pope Francis’s mission to address it.

The recent gathering of Catholic bishops to discuss the Church’s teachings on marriage, sexuality, and the family opened up new fault lines in the Church—and perhaps brought an end to this Pope’s era of good feelings.