Pope Francis changed church law Monday to explicitly allow women to do more things during Mass, granting them access to the most sacred place on the altar, while continuing to affirm that they cannot be priests.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis made a Christmas Day plea for authorities to make COVID-19 vaccines available to all, insisting that the first in line should be the most vulnerable and needy, regardless of who holds the patents for the shots.

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’s Santa Marta hotel was built to sequester cardinals during papal elections. It's now sequestering soon-to-be cardinals in town for this weekend’s ceremony to get their red hats: A handful are in protective coronavirus quarantine, confined to their rooms on Vatican orders and getting meals delivered to their doors.

Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and media organizations that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican’s coronavirus lockdown.

It’s not exactly divine intervention, but even the pope considers the U.S. presidential race over. President-elect Joe Biden, a lifelong Roman Catholic, spoke to Pope Francis on Thursday.

The Vatican on Tuesday will release its report into the rise and fall of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-influential American cardinal who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of rumors that he was a sexual predator.

Pope Francis is giving the Vatican secretariat of state three months to transfer all of its financial holdings to another Vatican office following its bungled management of hundreds of millions of euros in donations and investments that are now the subject of a corruption investigation.

Pope Francis urged people to follow recommendations from governments and health authorities to prevent coronavirus infections as he returned to his private library for his Wednesday general audience amid a surge of infections in Europe.

Questions swirled Thursday about the origins of Pope Francis’ bombshell comments endorsing same-sex civil unions, with all evidence suggesting he made them in a 2019 interview that was never broadcast in its entirety.

Pope Francis became the first to support same-sex civil unions, but the Spokane LGBTQ community has mixed feelings.

Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pope while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which had its premiere at the Rome Film Festival on Wednesday.

A masked Pope Francis welcomed religious leaders to a socially-distanced interfaith peace prayer Tuesday, appealing for a unified international effort to work for peace and an end to the coronavirus pandemic.

The powerful head of the Vatican's saint-making office, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, resigned Thursday from the post and renounced his rights as a cardinal amid a financial scandal that has reportedly implicated him indirectly.

The Vatican told bishops around the world on Thursday they should report cases of clergy sex crimes to police even when not legally bound to do so, in its latest effort to compel church leaders to protect minors from predator priests.

The founder of the Knights of Columbus, the influential U.S.-based lay Catholic organization, is moving a step closer to possible sainthood.

St. John Paul II was honored on the centennial of his birth Monday with special Masses at the Vatican and in his native Poland, an anniversary that comes as

Pope Francis says Easter can offer hope in people’s “darkest hour” as he celebrated Holy Saturday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, with the public barred because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pope Francis has presided over a torch-lit Good Friday procession, including nurses and doctors, in a hauntingly nearly empty St. Peter’s Square after the COVID-19 pandemic forced cancellation of the Way of the Cross ceremony at Rome’s Colosseum