VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican cardinal testified Wednesday that Pope Francis himself ordered the ouster of the Holy See’s auditor-general, turning the tables on a scandal that had sparked questions about the Vatican’s commitment to financial transparency and accountability.
ROME (AP) — Doctors have prescribed a wheelchair, cane and physical therapy to help heal Pope Francis' bad knee. He has other ideas.
According to a viral video of the pope at the end of a recent audience, Francis quipped that what he really needs for the pain is a shot of tequila.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, is heading to Kyiv this week as the Holy See seeks to balance its concern for Ukrainians amid Russia's war with its efforts to keep open a channel of dialogue with Moscow.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis created 10 new saints on Sunday, rallying from knee pain that has forced him to use a wheelchair to preside over the first canonization ceremony at the Vatican in over two years.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis, who has been using a wheelchair because of a bad knee, is going ahead with plans to visit Canada this summer so he can apologize in person for abuse suffered by Indigenous people at the hands of the Catholic church.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The wives of two Ukrainian soldiers defending the Mariupol steel mill met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and begged him to intervene to arrange for a third-party evacuation of the troops before Russian soldiers capture or kill them.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Retired Associated Press photographer Nick Ut met Wednesday with Pope Francis and gave him a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down the road after a napalm attack.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis’ willingness to work despite knee pain that has made walking nearly impossible shows other older adults that they have wisdom and experience to offer younger generations, a top Vatican cardinal said Tuesday.
BEIRUT (AP) — Pope Francis has postpone a planned visit to Lebanon next month due to health reasons, a Lebanese Cabinet minister said Monday.
Minister of Tourism Walid Nassar did not specify the ailment, but the pope is known to be suffering acute knee pain that has greatly curtailed his mobility in recent months.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday blasted Catholics who, hewing to old-school versions of liturgy like the Latin Mass, have made an ideological battleground of the issue, decrying what he described as devil-inspired divisiveness in the church.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis, whose mobility has been limited of late by a nagging knee problem, is looking forward to visiting South Sudan in July, according to a joint message by the pontiff, the archbishop of Canterbury and a Scottish church official.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis authorized spending up to 1 million euros to free a Colombian nun kidnapped by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali, a cardinal testified Thursday, revealing previously secret papal approval to hire a British security firm to find the nun and secure her freedom.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has arrived at an audience in a wheelchair as his knee pain continues to limit his mobility.
Francis was wheeled into the meeting Thursday with nuns and religious superiors from around the world who are meeting in Rome.
ROME (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Pope Francis vowed to work together to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the Vatican and Japanese officials said Wednesday as new nuclear threats worried Asia and Europe.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — His appeals for an Orthodox Easter truce in Ukraine went unheeded. His planned meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church was canceled. A proposed visit to Moscow?
ROME (AP) — The European Union plans to sanction the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in its next round of measures to punish Russia's invasion of Ukraine, EU diplomats said Wednesday, opening a new religious front in Europe’s sanctions regime.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis told an Italian newspaper he had offered to travel to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin to try to end Russia's war in Ukraine and suggested the invasion might have been provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis gave a new mandate to his sex abuse advisory commission Friday, telling its members to work with bishops around the world to establish special welcome centers for victims and to audit the church’s progress on fighting abuse from its new perch within the Vatican.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The former director of the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency testified Wednesday that Pope Francis asked him to help the Vatican secretariat of state get full control of a London property, once again putting the pope and his top deputies in the spotlight for their roles in the problematic deal.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis again canceled his daily meetings Tuesday because of acute knee pain that has greatly curtailed his mobility in recent months.
The Vatican said in a statement that Francis' doctors had recommended he interrupt his planned activities, which included a meeting of his cabinet of cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis made key appointments in his newly reformed Vatican bureaucracy Saturday, naming new deputies for the doctrine office and confirming the highest-ranked woman in the Holy See as the No.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis cleared his schedule Friday to undergo medical checks on his right knee, as his strained ligaments have made walking, standing and getting up from his chair increasingly difficult and painful.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday as the war in Ukraine and the millions of refugees it has created cast a shadow over two leaders who have long sought closer ties with Russia.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI turned 95 this past weekend, a significant milestone on its own but even more given he has now been a retired pope longer than he was a reigning one.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — On what is supposed to be Christianity's most joyful day, Pope Francis made an anguished Easter Sunday plea for peace in the “senseless” war in Ukraine and in other armed conflicts raging in the world, and voiced worry about the risk of nuclear warfare.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday invoked “gestures of peace in these days marked by the horror of war” in an Easter vigil homily in St. Peter’s Basilica attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three Ukrainian lawmakers.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis washed the feet of a dozen inmates at a prison near Rome in a Holy Thursday ritual that symbolizes humility and service and highlights his papacy's attention to those on society's margins.
ROME (AP) — A close associate of Pope Francis on Wednesday defended the Vatican’s decision to have a Russian woman and a Ukrainian woman carry the cross together during a Good Friday procession that will be presided over by the pontiff.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis opened Holy Week Sunday with a call for an Easter truce in Ukraine to make room for a negotiated peace, highlighting the need for leaders to “make some sacrifices for the good of the people.”
As Native Americans cautiously welcome Pope Francis’ historic apology for abuses at Catholic-run boarding schools for Indigenous children in Canada, U.S.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Wednesday kissed a battered Ukrainian flag that he said was brought to him from the “martyred” Ukrainian city of Bucha as he denounced the “massacre” there and called again for an end to the war.
BEIRUT (AP) — Pope Francis will visit Lebanon in June, the president's office said Tuesday, in an apparent show of support for the country experiencing an unprecedented economic meltdown.
Francis has held special prayers for Lebanon and has repeatedly said he plans to visit the small country since the economic meltdown began in October 2019.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The former head of the Vatican’s financial watchdog testified Tuesday that the agency launched an intelligence investigation into a suspicious London real estate deal after it learned about it but had no power to stop the Vatican secretariat of state from concluding it.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis said Sunday he was still working on arranging a meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, despite that leader's seeming justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and said he wouldn't rule out travelling to the region if it would help.
VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — Pope Francis prayed Sunday for an end to the “sacrilegious” war in Ukraine and for the world to show compassion to refugees as he concluded a two-day visit to Malta that was dominated by his concern for the devastation unleashed by Russia’s invasion.
VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — Pope Francis said Saturday he was considering a possible visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and blasted the leader who launched a “savage” war, delivering his most pointed denunciation yet of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis heads to the Mediterranean island nation of Malta on Saturday for a pandemic-delayed weekend visit, aiming to draw attention to Europe’s migration challenge has only become more stark with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Friday made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools and said he hoped to visit Canada in late July to deliver the apology in person to survivors of the church's misguided missionary zeal.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis heads to Malta this weekend, with the refugee exodus from Ukraine casting a haunting backdrop to the European migration drama that for years has focused on Malta and other Mediterranean countries and the plight of desperate people who arrive on boats seeking refuge.
ROME (AP) — Drums pounded through the frescoed halls of the Apostolic Palace on Thursday and out into St. Peter's Square as Pope Francis welcomed a First Nations delegation seeking an apology for the Catholic Church’s role in running Canada’s notorious residential schools.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis allegedly authorized negotiating an exit strategy for a key figure in the Vatican’s bungled London real estate investment and was so satisfied with the outcome that he paid for a celebratory dinner at a fancy Roman fish restaurant the night the 15-million- euro payout closed, a defendant in the Vatican's extortion trial testified Wednesday.
ROME (AP) — A German humanitarian group appealed Wednesday for Malta to take in 32 migrants who were rescued off Libya this week by the Ukrainian captain of a container ship.
The request came as Pope Francis, who is scheduled to visit Malta this weekend, encouraged the tiny European Union nation in the central Mediterranean Sea to welcome refugees in general.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Indigenous leaders from Canada and survivors of the country’s notorious residential schools met with Pope Francis on Monday and told him of the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests and school workers.
TORONTO (AP) — When an Assembly of First Nations delegation traveled to the Vatican in 2009 to meet with then-Pope Benedict XVI, the pontiff told them in a private meeting of his “personal anguish” over abuse suffered by Indigenous children in church-run boarding schools they were forced to attend in Canada.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis prayed for peace in Ukraine in a ceremony Friday that harked back to a century-old apocalyptic prophecy about peace and Russia that was sparked by purported visions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Vatican officials on Monday defended the last-minute rollout of Pope Francis’ reform of the Holy See bureaucracy while also painting it as one of the most consequential moves of his pontificate since it recognizes that any believer, male or female, can head a Vatican office.
Russian troops stepped up their bombardment of Ukraine's besieged port city of Mariupol on Sunday, bombing an art school where officials say 400 people were sheltering.
Hours after the strike, Russia demanded that Ukrainians in the besieged city lay down their arms in exchange for safe passage out of town.