Joshua J. McElwee

Vatican City -- The president of Pope Francis’ commission to study the history of women deacons in the Catholic Church says his group is not planning to advise the pontiff on whether to reinstitute the practice of ordaining women as deacons.

Rome: A Pakistani archbishop has warned about the "gradual erosion" of religious freedom in his country, saying the nation's caretaker government has not been able to control vigilantism undertaken by religious extremists.

Aboard the papal flight from Geneva: Pope Francis said he was not "hitting the brakes" when he asked Germany's Catholic bishops to set aside proposed national guidelines on allowing Protestants married to Catholics to receive Communion.

Geneva: Pope Francis has called on the fellowship of 350 Christian denominations known as the World Council of Churches to be more missionary in its approach, warning the ecumenical organization against adopting "worldly ways of thinking" during a one-day visit here for its 70th anniversary.

Pope Francis has backed the U.S. bishops in their criticism of President Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the Mexican border, saying in a new interview that he wishes to echo their judgment that the practice is immoral.

The Vatican document outlining the initial working positions for October's global meeting of Catholic bishops on the needs of young people takes a notably inclusive tone towards both young Catholics who express disagreement with church teachings and young gay people.

Pope Francis' upcoming visit to Geneva to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches, a fellowship of 348 Christian denominations, is taking on special significance because of the increasingly divisive nature of global politics.

The group of cardinals advising Pope Francis on reforming the Vatican bureaucracy says it will soon deliver for consideration by the pope the "first systematic text" for a possible new structure of the city-state's institutions.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Catholic bishop at the center of Chile's clergy sexual abuse crisis, in the first of what is expected to be a wave of firings to root out what the pontiff has termed a "culture of abuse and cover-up" in the church.

A Vatican document meant to help prepare for a special meeting of Catholic bishops from the Amazon rainforest focuses on how the church's ministry in the nine-nation region is overextended and calls for consideration of "new ways" to allow laypeople "better and more frequent access to the Eucharist."

Rome: Pope Francis appears set to order the opening of the Vatican's first permanent embassy in South Sudan in a gesture of solidarity with a country that has suffered a devastating civil war since 2013.

Ending Clergy Abuse, an organization made up of some of the most prominent voices on the issue from 15 countries, will specifically call on Pope Francis to more thoroughly investigate bishops who have mishandled abuse cases and to create a centralized Vatican process to hold them accountable.

Among those that have followed the decadeslong clergy sex abuse crisis, some speculate that we may be entering a new phase, where authorities display less hesitancy in holding church leaders to account.

Pope Francis and Vatican officials plan to meet with some of the world's leading oil executives this week, in what appears as an effort to lobby the industry to take the dangers of climate change more seriously.

Australian Bishop Gregory O'Kelly, appointed by Pope Francis June 3 as Adelaide's apostolic administrator, said he believes people in the archdiocese need "affirmation and assurance."

Pope Francis has appointed an apostolic administrator to run the Australian archdiocese of Adelaide, where Archbishop Philip Wilson has been found guilty of neglecting to report clergy sexual abuse as a priest in the 1970s.

Pope Francis admitted in a May 31 letter to the people of Chile that clergy sexual abuse has continued because church leaders have not taken victims seriously. 

The Vatican announced Pope Francis will soon be sending a letter to "all the People of God" of Chile, in what appears to be a sign that the pope has made a decision about whether to accept the resignations of the country's bishops over their mishandling of clergy sexual abuse.

The Vatican's doctrinal office reaffirms the Catholic Church's ban on women priests, Pope Francis meets Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and Italy's political crisis continues to deepen.

Rome -- The head of the Vatican's doctrinal office has reaffirmed the Catholic Church's ban on the ordination of women as priests, writing in a new article that the teaching has a "definitive character" and "is a truth belonging to the deposit of faith."