Cindy Wooden

Reading the Bible and praying with it is "the best vaccine" against Catholic communities closing in on themselves or focusing only on self-preservation, Pope Francis said.

On Easter Monday, Pope Francis led thousands of people in St. Peter's Square in praying for the hundreds of people who died or were injured in bomb blasts the previous day in Sri Lanka.

As individuals and as a church, it can be tempting to dwell on mistakes, failures and sins that block the fullness of life, but Easter is the proclamation that the Lord is victorious and his love will triumph, Pope Francis said.

The president of France and the archbishop of Paris have vowed to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral after a devastating fire, continuing what a professor of architecture described as the natural lifecycle of a historic building.

Acclaimed by the crowds and knowing he was the Messiah they sought, Jesus still chose the path of humility and self-emptying, focused only on doing God's will, Pope Francis said on Palm Sunday.

Marking retired Pope Benedict XVI's 92nd birthday, the editorial director of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication insisted what the retired pope wrote about facing the clerical sexual abuse crisis is essentially what Pope Francis has said, too.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has banned a Legionaries of Christ priest from publicly exercising his priestly ministry for 10 years after he was convicted in Chile of sexually abusing a young girl.

At the end of a highly unusual spiritual retreat for the political leaders of warring factions, Pope Francis knelt at the feet of the leaders of South Sudan, begging them to give peace a chance and to be worthy "fathers of the nation."

Human trafficking is a "crime against humanity," because it denies the human dignity of the victim, seeing him or her only as a piece of merchandise to be used to enrich or give pleasure to another, Pope Francis said.

Ten years after Pope Benedict XVI established personal ordinariates for Catholics coming from the Anglican tradition, the Vatican has issued a slightly updated set of norms governing them.

U.S. Cardinal Edwin O'Brien, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, celebrated his 80th birthday April 8, meaning he is no longer eligible to enter a conclave to elect a new pope.

Presenting the Pharisees as self-righteous hypocrites concerned more with the law than with people is prejudicial, biblically inaccurate and offensive to many Jews, several scholars said.

God is patient and merciful, but people should not put off their conversion because they never know how long they will live, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis urged legislators from the Czech Republic and Slovakia to honor their nations' Christian heritage by working to increase "mutual acceptance and solidarity."

The Vatican's tentative agreement with the government of mainland China obviously has a diplomatic component, but it was motivated by a desire to spread the Gospel and ensure the appropriate freedom of the Catholic Church, the Vatican secretary of state wrote.

Lent is a time to ask for God's grace to chip away at hypocrisy, which is seen in the natural human attempt to appear "worthier than we are," Pope Francis said.

The clerical abuse scandal has caused everyone in the Catholic Church "pain and unbearable suffering," Pope Francis said, but it also is a call to repentance and the renewal of the church.

What makes a politician "Catholic" is not party affiliation, but dedication to promoting the common good, particularly through listening to and empowering people who often are overlooked, Pope Francis said.

Lent is a good time to concentrate on fighting the urge to gossip about others and instead trying to correct one's own faults and defects, Pope Francis said.

Just a few days after the Vatican summit on child protection and clerical sexual abuse, the bishops' conference and major religious superiors of Switzerland adopted new guidelines, which include mandatory reporting of all allegations to the police.