Welcome to our final issue for 2022.

Pope Francis was one of the first global figures to return to a pre-pandemic life, setting out to Iraq in March 2021. After this, he visited Hungary and Slovakia in September and Cyprus and Greece at the end of that year.

During the course of 2022 the pontiff visited Malta, Canada and Kazakhstan. Last month he was in Bahrain for the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence and to meet with his friend the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad al-Tayeb. Our director, Father Antonio Spadaro, traveled with the pope and he penned an account Against ‘Isolated Thinking’, Francis’ Apostolic journey to Bahrain.

September 22-24, the Focolare Movement organized the first major Economy of Francesco event in Assisi. A network of young Catholic economists, businesspeople and thinkers, the group is the response to the pope’s call to young Catholics around the world to seek a new type of economy, one that includes environmental and social justice. Father Gael Giraud reflects on the event in Night of Contemporary Youth.

The war in Ukraine is being felt everywhere. The Effects of the Ukraine Invasion on Africa by Father Fidèle Ingiyimbere, reports on the food scarcity as well as political, economic and environmental impacts of this conflict.

Father Gonzalo Villagrán Medina looks beyond secularization in Public Theology and the Word of the Church in Pluralist Societies where we find people whose origins and personal, existential situations are increasingly different and distant from what could be defined as the traditional ecclesial model.

In Christmas in Difficult Times, our editors remind us the whole world is essentially in or close to a state of war and yet it’s Advent, and again the long-awaited one enters history and light shines in the darkness.

A year after opening in October 2021, the Synod “For a Synodal Church: communion, participation, mission” has taken a decisive step forward releasing the Document for the Continental Stage. Giacomo Costa, former director of Aggiornamenti Sociali and a consultant to the General Secretariat of the Synod, reviews the document in For a Synodal Church.

Also in the issue:

The Holy See and the People’s Republic of China Renew the Provisional Agreement, Antonio Spadaro
The Nuclear Threat and the War in Ukraine, Giovanni Sale
The Legacy of Cardinal Martini, Carlo Casalone
Andrei Ujica’s ‘2 Pasolini’, Antonio Spadaro
Business, Society and the Human Community, Étienne Perrot
Jean-Luc Godard: Life, liberty and language, Piero Loredan
Honor and Femicide, Alberto Ares Mateos and Lorena Rojas Ávalos

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Our commentary and analysis is both educated and informed providing a clear indication of what Rome is thinking on a wide range of issues that affect the contemporary Church.