Bombs and tanks "cannot stop" the ideology of ISIS spreading, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, nuncio to Jordan and Iraq, has said. A bishops' conference official has urged Pope Francis to spend more than one day with typhoon survivors in the Philippines in January. The Catholic news outlet AsiaNews has raised almost $900,000 (£500,000, €700,000) for the Middle Eastern faithful with its Adopt a Christian campaign. Almost half the world's annulment cases originated in America in 2012, reports the Washington Post. Jimmy Akin, Tina Beattie, Bishop Paul Butler, David Cloutier, Nick Donnelly, Andrea Gagliarducci, Robert George, Roberto de Mattei, Tim Stanley, R R Reno, Andrew Sullivan, Marco Tosatti and George Weigel offer observations on the family synod. Grant Gallicho, Fr Dwight Longenecker, Elizabeth Scalia, Matthew Schmitz, Damian Thompson and Fr John Zuhlsdorf decipher Cardinal Walter Kasper's comments about Africans. And the tomb of Pope Paul VI, who will be beatified on Sunday, already bears the word "Blessed".