Nicole Winfield

The Vatican released Leo's agenda for day trips to a half-dozen Italian cities over the next six months. The Vatican has rarely released such plans together and so far in advance, but word of the visits was starting to filter out.

Pope Urban VIII "immediately realized that Bernini could become the Michelangelo of his century," the exhibit's co-curator Andrea Bacchi said.

In a message titled "Life in Abundance" issued on the same day as the Milan Cortina opening ceremony, Pope Leo XIV traced the history of Christian philosophers and popes who had identified sports and leisure activity as beneficial for both physical and spiritual development.

Spain's Catholic bishops agreed Thursday to let the Spanish government's ombudsman have the final say in the church's compensation of victims of sexual abuse by clergy members who have died or whose possible crimes are too old to be prosecuted.

A day after closing out the 2025 Holy Year, Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday opened a new phase of his pontificate by gathering the world's cardinals to Rome and indicating some reform-minded priorities going forward.

Pope Leo XIV opened 2026 on Thursday with a plea for peace, singling out in particular countries "bloodied by conflict" and families wounded by violence.

Pope Leo XIV urged Vatican cardinals on Monday to put their ambitions of power and personal interests aside, as he followed in Pope Francis' footsteps and used a Christmas greeting to gently criticize his closest collaborators.

This is a story both big and small, of art and faith and a human tragedy that caught the attention of Pope Francis: homeless German man Burkhard Scheffler died from the cold in 2022 on the edge of St. Peter's Square.

Pope Leo XIV criticized prison overcrowding and insufficient inmate rehabilitation programs on Sunday as he celebrated a special Mass for detainees, guards and their families in the final event of the Vatican's 2025 Holy Year.

Pope Leo XIV has taken his biggest step yet to correct one of Pope Francis' more problematic financial moves, canceling a special Holy See fundraising commission that was announced under questionable circumstances while Francis was hospitalized.

The Vatican then sent out a corrected version of its bulletin about the trip, removing reference to the planned "brief moment of silent prayer," without further explanation.

Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip, a pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon that would be delicate under any circumstances but is even more fraught given Mideast tensions and the media glare that will document history's first American pope on the road.

Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of a Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s. It is the first known time the new pontiff has removed a bishop accused of abuse.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's letter asked that Pope Leo formalize Pope Francis' informal arrangement in which Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi had served as a personal papal envoy for humanitarian issues.

A 15th-century Bible which is considered one of the most spectacular examples of Renaissance illuminated manuscripts went on display in Rome on Thursday as part of the Vatican's Holy Year celebrations.

Pope Leo XIV acknowledged Wednesday that there had been misunderstandings and conflicts with Jews over Israel's war in Gaza. But he strongly confirmed the Catholic Church's condemnation of antisemitism and commitment to fighting it as part of Christians' Gospel-mandated friendship with the Jewish people.

Pope Leo XIV will pray at the site of the 2020 port blast in Beirut that killed over 200 people and compounded Lebanon's economic and political crisis during his first foreign trip as pope next month that will also take him to Turkey to mark an important anniversary with Orthodox Christians.

Pope Leo XIV urged Catholic teachers on Tuesday to focus less on pre-professional outcomes and more on educating students to have rich spiritual lives and use technology in ways that keep human dignity front and center.

Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated a traditional Latin Mass Oct. 25 in St. Peter's Basilica with the explicit permission of Pope Leo XIV, thrilling traditionalist Catholics.

The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church's troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.