The Roman Catholic Church should not have "leaders for life" in its ranks, otherwise it would risk being like a country under dictatorship, Pope Francis said on Friday.
An historic meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church is "getting closer every day," a senior Orthodox prelate said in an interview published on Sunday.
Pope Francis said on Sunday the mistreatment of migrants escaping war and injustice "makes one cry" as he visited the northern Italian city of Turin, stopping to pray before an icon some Christians believe is Jesus' burial cloth.
Pope Francis demanded swift action on Thursday to save the planet from environmental ruin, urging world leaders to hear "the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor", plunging the Catholic Church into political controversy over climate change.
Pope Francis makes an urgent call for protection of the planet and repeats his view that global warming is mostly man-made in his keenly awaited encyclical, according to a draft published by an Italian magazine on Monday.
Pope Francis on Friday said he planned to visit the Central African Republic and Uganda in November, and hoped to go to Kenya, during his first trip to Africa since becoming pope.
President Vladimir Putin will be on the lookout for signs of dissent over European Union sanctions on Russia when he visits Italy on Wednesday, but he is likely to be disappointed.
Pope Francis named two Palestinian women as saints on Sunday, in a ceremony in Saint Peter's Square just days after the Vatican formalized its de facto recognition of the State of Palestine.
Germany's Roman Catholic Church, an influential voice for reforms prompted by Pope Francis, has decided lay employees who divorce and remarry or form gay civil unions should no longer automatically lose their jobs.
Pope Francis presided at two Good Friday services, praying for persecuted Christians a day after Islamist militants attacked a university in Kenya, killing at least 147 people.
The devil is punishing Mexico with criminal violence, Pope Francis said, just a few weeks after the Mexican government complained that the Pontiff had stigmatized the country as a breeding ground for gangland chaos.
A remark by Pope Francis to the effect that he hoped his homeland Argentina could avoid "Mexicanization" was not intended to offend Mexicans or to undervalue the government's efforts to fight drug trafficking, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
Pope Francis expressed deep sadness at the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, departing from the script of an address on Monday to emphasise the unity of all Christians regardless of the denomination they follow.
Egyptian jets bombed Islamic State targets in Libya on Monday, a day after the group there released a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians, drawing Cairo directly into the conflict across its border.
Pope Francis urged Roman Catholic leaders on Sunday to shun a "closed caste" mentality, saying the Church's credibility rested on its ability to help the poor and persecuted on the margins of society.
Kiev, Moscow, Munich, Washington, Ottawa, Minsk and Brussels -- all in a week's work for Angela Merkel, whose tireless efforts to broker peace in Ukraine and keep Greece in the euro zone won praise even from the chancellor's fiercest critics in Germany.
An estimated 300 people probably died this week after attempting to reach Italy from Libya in stormy weather, the U.N. refugee agency said on Wednesday after speaking to a handful of survivors.
A gas truck explosion ripped through a maternity hospital on the western edge of Mexico City on Thursday, killing one woman and two children and injuring dozens, authorities said, with several babies found alive in the rubble.
The U.S. aid worker whose release from a Cuban prison helped pave the way toward restoring diplomatic ties with the communist nation will be among the White House's top guests for Tuesday's State of the Union address.
Pope Francis said a huge open-air Mass for a rain-drenched crowd of millions in the Philippine capital on Sunday, after appealing to the world to "learn how to cry" over the plight of poor, hungry, homeless and abused children.
