Nicole Winfield

The Vatican will publish a document next week on gender theory and surrogacy that was announced in a bid to respond to opposition from conservatives over Pope Francis' willingness to bless same-sex unions.

Pope Francis urged his priests Thursday to avoid “clerical hypocrisy” and treat their flocks with mercy as he delivered a lengthy set of marching orders to Rome-based priests at the start of a busy few days leading to Easter.

Pope Francis decided at the last minute to skip his homily during Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, avoiding a strenuous speech at the start of a busy Holy Week that will test his increasingly frail health.

Pope Francis on Thursday defrocked a notorious Belgian bishop who admitted 14 years ago that he sexually abused his nephew but faced no Vatican punishment.

Several prominent lawyers have published stinging academic critiques and legal opinions about the Vatican’s recently concluded "trial of the century," highlighting violations of basic defense rights and rule of law norms that they warn could have consequences for the Holy See going forward.

Pope Francis says he has no plans to resign and isn’t suffering from any health problems that would require doing so, saying in a new memoir he still has “many projects to bring to fruition.”

The Vatican secretary of state is seeking to defuse outrage over Pope Francis' latest diplomatic foray, insisting in media interviews that a primary condition for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine is an end to Russia’s aggression and that any peace must be a “just peace.”

Pope Francis met with his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which is expected to soon release the first-ever audit of safeguarding procedures and policies church-wide.

One of the first women who accused a once-exalted Jesuit artist of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse went public Feb. 21 to demand transparency from the Vatican and a full accounting of the hierarchs who covered for him for 30 years.

Five years ago this week, Pope Francis convened an unprecedented summit of bishops from around the world to impress on them that clergy sexual abuse was a global problem and that they needed to do something about it.

Despite their rocky start, Argentina's President Javier Milei and Pope Francis appeared to have hit it off as they held their first meeting Feb. 12 amid speculation that the Argentine pontiff might finally go home for a visit later this year.

Pope Francis on Jan. 10 confirmed a new leader for India's Syro-Malabar Church in a step toward healing a decades-long liturgical dispute that became so dire that Francis recently threatened to excommunicate hundreds of priests.

A Vatican tribunal on Saturday convicted a cardinal of embezzlement and sentenced him to 5.5 years in prison in one of several verdicts handed down in a complicated financial trial that aired the city state’s dirty laundry and tested its justice system.

Verdicts are expected Dec. 16 for a cardinal and nine other defendants in the most complicated financial trial in the Vatican's modern history: a case featuring a Hollywood-worthy cast of characters, unseemly revelations about the Holy See and questions about Pope Francis ' own role in the deals.

Pope Francis says he wants to be buried in the Rome basilica of St. Mary Major, not in the grottoes of the Vatican like other popes, so he can be near his favorite icon of the Madonna.

Pope Francis said Dec. 6 he was feeling "much better" after a two-week bout of bronchitis but again asked an aide to read his remarks.

Pope Francis has punished one of his highest-ranking critics, Cardinal Raymond Burke, by yanking his right to a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary in the second such radical action against a conservative American prelate this month, according to two people briefed on the measures.

Pope Francis met separately Nov. 22 with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinians living through the war and begged for an end to what he called terrorism and "the passions that are killing everyone."

Pope Francis' recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in this working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic.