Pope Francis's visit to Sri Lanka will definitely go ahead on January 13, despite the presidential election on January 8, organisers confirmed yesterday. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill prayed for peace in Ukraine in his Christmas address last night. Masked men shot dead two policemen as they guarded a Coptic church in the Egyptian city of Minya yesterday. Christopher Kerr, Steve Moore, Andrew Revkin, Thomas Peters and Robert Royal comment on the Pope's forthcoming environment encyclical. Prashanth Parameswaran reflects on "Pope Francis’s apparent pivot to Asia". Michel Houellebecq says he had planned for his narrator to convert to Catholicism in his controversial new novel Soumission. And Francis will eat roast pig, moringa and tropical fruits with natural disaster survivors in the Philippines on January 17. Follow me on Twitter @lukecoppen for updates throughout the day.