Human Rights Watch, in a detailed new report, says Chinese authorities are increasing pressure on underground Catholic communities to join the state-controlled official church while tightening surveillance and travel restrictions on all of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.

Pope Leo XIV’s trip to Africa is so dizzying in its complexity it recalls some of the early globe-trotting odysseys of St. John Paul II.

Pope Leo XIV is making a long and ambitious odyssey across four African countries -- Algeria, Angola, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

Pope Leo XIV has visited Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, emphasizing Christian unity during his trip to Turkey.

Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip.

The Vatican has launched an investigation into a possible antisemitic incident involving a Swiss Guard.

Pope Leo XIV has celebrated his first Mass, a day after his historic election as the first U.S.-born pope in the church’s 2,000-year history.

Details have begun to emerge of how votes swiftly coalesced to make Pope Leo XIV history’s first American pope.

President Donald Trump has posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself dressed as pope.

Vatican workers have installed the simple stove in the Sistine Chapel where ballots will be burned during the upcoming conclave to elect a new pope.

The conclave that begins Wednesday to elect a successor for Pope Francis is the first in 46 ½ years for which the Vatican hasn't ordered a new cassock for the new head of the Catholic Church.

Cardinals this week will start in-depth discussions on planning the conclave to choose Pope Francis' successor.

A weak and frail Pope Francis has returned home to the Vatican from the hospital after a five-week, life-threatening bout of pneumonia.

The Vatican says Pope Francis remains in critical condition and blood tests show early kidney failure but he remains alert and “well-oriented.”.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is in critical condition after he suffered a long asthmatic respiratory crisis that required high flows of oxygen.

The Vatican says that Pope Francis’ clinical condition is “improving slightly,” adding that he went about his work activities from the hospital where he is recovering from pneumonia.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has visited Pope Francis in the hospital and says he’s “alert and responsive” and full of good humor despite his pneumonia.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has developed pneumonia in both his lungs, after new tests showed a further complication in the condition of the 88-year-old pope.

The Vatican says Pope Francis’ respiratory tract infection is presenting a “complex clinical picture” that will require further hospitalization.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is stable and that he followed Mass on television after a second night sleeping well at the hospital.

Doctors have prescribed “absolute rest” for Pope Francis to help him recover from a respiratory tract infection.

President Joe Biden will travel to Italy next month to meet with Pope Francis and top Italian officials for what is expected to be the final international trip of his presidency.

Pope Francis on the first papal visit ever to the French island of Corsica on Sunday called for a dynamic form of laicism, promoting the kind of popular piety that distinguishes the Mediterranean island from secular France as a bridge between religious and civic society.

The Vatican has confirmed that plans remain in place for Pope Francis to go to Belgium and Luxembourg.

Pope Francis has apologized after he was quoted using a vulgar term about gay men to reaffirm the Catholic Church’s ban on gay priests.

The Vatican says that Pope Francis has canceled an audience as a precaution after coming down with mild flu.

The Vatican spokesman says Pope Francis is expected to be released from the hospital “in the coming days.”.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has tasked a leading Italian cardinal with a mission it hopes it can “ease tensions" in the Ukraine war and lead to path of peace.

The Vatican says that Pope Francis is expected to be discharged on Saturday from the Rome hospital where he is being treated for bronchitis.

The Vatican says Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is lucid, conscious and stable, but his condition remains serious.

The Vatican says a preliminary church investigation into sexual assault allegations by a Canadian woman against a top cardinal has determined the case doesn’t warrant further investigation.

Francis said the idea of a trip “cooks over time in my conscience,” and that the pandemic was the issue that weighed most heavily on him. Francis, the Vatican delegation and traveling media were vaccinated against COVID-19, while most Iraqis haven't been. Francis said he wasn’t sure if he would have to slow down his usual whirlwind pace on future trips. Otherwise, the only other trip Francis has promised to make is to Lebanon, though he offered no time frame. He said the country's patriarch had asked him to add a Beirut leg onto his Iraq trip but that he had declined, thinking it would be like tossing the country “crumbs," given all Lebanon’s current problems.

FILE - In this Dec. 8, 2020 file photo, Pope Francis delivers his message during the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter's Square, on the Immaculate Conception day, at the Vatican. Pope Francis is once again canceling public appearances due to nerve pain. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, file)ROME – Pope Francis marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday by warning that warped ideologies can pave the way to another mass extermination. In all, about 6 million European Jews and millions of other people were killed by the Germans and their collaborators. The Argentine pope insisted on the need to remember, saying it was a sign of humanity and a condition for a peaceful future.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis will make a pilgrimage to Iraq in March, pandemic conditions permitting, the Vatican said Monday, in announcing what would be the pontiff's first trip abroad in more than a year. The Vatican said Francis had accepted invitations from the Iraqi government from the local Catholic church. It wasn't immediately clear if the pope would travel if he had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 before the trip. In mid-2019, Francis told Catholic aid agencies that he planned on traveling to Iraq in 2020. While then ailing, he had wanted to go to Iraq in 1999, but, according to the Vatican, the pilgrimage never happened because then-dictator Saddam Hussein postponed it.

A man prays in the street outside the Notre Dame church in Nice, southern France, after a knife attack took place on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)PARIS – The Latest on a knife attack in Nice, France, (all times local):10:25 p.m.France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor says the Nice attacker, who was born in 1999, was not on the radar of intelligence agencies as a potential threat. The rally came on the day an attacker armed with a knife killed three people inside a church in the French city of Nice. An attacker armed with a knife killed three people in the southern French coastal city Thursday. ___11:20 a.m.An attacker armed with a knife has killed three people at a church in the southern French city of Nice.