In a signal of continuity, Pope Francis’s successor didn’t wear the papal red velvet loafers to his inaugural Mass before cardinals Friday at the Sistine Chapel.

Pope Leo XIV, now the successor of St. Peter, leads the 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church in a sacred role that few others will ever hold.

The new pope, Leo XIV, has something in common with many of his peers in the Catholic hierarchy.

Francis’s 69-year-old successor is the first U.S.-born pope in the 2,000-year history of the Roman Catholic Church, which has grown to 1.4 billion strong.

Cardinal Robert Prevost, the first U.S. pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church, previously led a Catholic religious order.

At 3 p.m., black smoke rose above the Sistine Chapel in Rome, signaling that the first vote did not produce a new pope.

The conclave that begins Wednesday to elect a successor for Pope Francis is the first in 46 ½ years for which the Vatican hasn't ordered a new cassock for the new head of the Catholic Church.

The bells are ringing for the passing of a pontiff.

The Vatican is grieving the first head of the Catholic Church from the Americas and Saturday marks the beginning of the Novendiales, nine days of mourning. It also marks the fifth day of national mourning in Italy.

The head of the basilica that is housing Pope Francis's tomb says it reflects his “humble, simple and essential" life.

Speculation surrounding a conclave to elect a pope is a time-honored tradition.

Hours after Israel's Foreign Ministry posted a condolence for the passing for Pope Francis, it was deleted without explanation.

The body of Pope Francis was moved Wednesday morning to St. Peter’s Basilica for three days of public mourning for an Argentine pontiff remembered for his humble style, concern for the poor and insistent prayers for peace.

One of Pope Francis’ final encounters before his death was with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who visited the Vatican over the weekend.

Pope Francis met privately with King Charles III and Queen Camilla at the Vatican during the royal couple’s four-day state visit to Italy and on the occasion of their 20th wedding anniversary.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the Vatican has defended many of the administration’s foreign-aid cuts at a Senate hearing, even while saying Catholic charitable groups are well-equipped to deliver such aid efficiently.

Disgraced former Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has died.

Pope Francis has returned home to the Vatican after he was hospitalized for five weeks with a life-threatening bout of pneumonia.

Two of Pope Francis’ closest advisers are predicting that he will recover from pneumonia and that a “new stage” in his pontificate will open after he is released.

Pope Francis’s condition has continued to improve and he no longer needs to use noninvasive mechanical ventilation to help him breathe at night.

The Italian postal service has seen a huge increase in mail addressed to Pope Francis since his Feb. 14 hospitalization.

Pope Francis has entered the fifth week of hospital treatment for double pneumonia very much looking ahead as he continued work on a signature priority of his papacy.

Pope Francis’ recovery from double pneumonia continues.

Pope Francis has entered his fourth week in the hospital with double pneumonia, increasingly handing off his day-to-day duties to cardinals as questions swirl about the near and long-term future of his papacy.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is responding well to therapy for double pneumonia and has shown a “gradual, slight improvement” in recent days.

Friday marks three weeks since Pope Francis was hospitalized for bronchitis, which then led to double pneumonia.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is in stable condition and breathing with just the help of supplemental oxygen after respiratory crises a day earlier.

The Vatican says that Pope Francis has suffered two new episodes of acute respiratory crises and has been put back on noninvasive mechanical ventilation.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has remained in stable condition and didn’t need any mechanical ventilation.

As Pope Francis remains hospitalized, a group of migrant transgender women are praying for his recovery.

The Vatican says Pope Francis suffered a coughing fit that resulted in him breathing in vomit, requiring non-invasive mechanical ventilation.

The Vatican says that Pope Francis continues to improve from double pneumonia Thursday, though doctors say he needs more days of “clinical stability” before they revise their guarded prognosis.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has shown further slight improvement as he battles double pneumonia, but doctors still say his prognosis is still guarded.

The Vatican says Pope Francis remains in critical condition but has shown slight improvement in laboratory tests.

South Florida Catholics are coming together in prayer after the Vatican confirmed Saturday that Pope Francis was listed in critical condition as he continues to battle severe health issues.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is in critical condition after he suffered a long asthmatic respiratory crisis that required high flows of oxygen.

The pope looms so large in everyday Italian life that there are lots of expressions that make light of even a dark event like his death.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has developed pneumonia in both his lungs, after new tests showed a further complication in the condition of the 88-year-old pope.

The Vatican says Pope Francis’ respiratory tract infection is presenting a “complex clinical picture” that will require further hospitalization.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is stable and that he followed Mass on television after a second night sleeping well at the hospital.

Doctors have prescribed “absolute rest” for Pope Francis to help him recover from a respiratory tract infection.

Preliminary tests show Pope Francis has a respiratory tract infection.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of an influential Peruvian bishop, who has come under criticism for not doing enough to stop abuses committed by a conservative Catholic movement that was recently disbanded by the Vatican.

Pope Francis has taken the remarkable step of dissolving a Peruvian-based Catholic movement, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.

Pope Francis says Donald Trump’s plans to impose mass deportations of immigrants would be a “disgrace.”.

Pope Francis has told ambassadors accredited to the Holy See that he wasn’t up to delivering his annual foreign policy speech and asked an aide to deliver it instead.

Pope Francis has denounced the “scourge” of child labor and other abuses suffered by children, saying anyone who harms or exploits a child will have to answer to God.

Pope Francis has told Vatican bureaucrats to stop speaking ill of one another.

President-elect Donald Trump says he’s nominating the president of the advocacy group CatholicVote to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

President Joe Biden will travel to Italy next month to meet with Pope Francis and top Italian officials for what is expected to be the final international trip of his presidency.

Pope Francis is installing 21 new cardinals, many of whom are key figures in his reform agenda.

Survivors of clergy sexual abuse are urging the Vatican to adopt the same zero-tolerance policy that it approved for the U.S. Catholic Church in 2002.

Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute genocide.

Pope Francis is asking the diocese of Rome to help alleviate a growing housing crisis in the Eternal City.

Several U.S. Catholic bishops on Wednesday encouraged the church to boldly share Vatican teachings on a range of hot-button issues, including the condemnation of abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy and gender-affirming surgery.

The New Orleans Saints may be one of the worst teams in the NFL this season.

The Vatican tribunal says it convicted a cardinal of aggravated fraud and other charges because of his “objectively inexplicable behavior” in paying a self-styled intelligence analyst more than a half-million euros (dollars) in Vatican money.

Pope Francis’ child protection board has issued its first-ever global assessment of the Catholic Church's efforts to address the clergy sex abuse crisis.

With Pope Francis a few weeks away from his 88th birthday, the plotting for his successor is well underway at the Vatican.

Peruvian theologian the Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of the social justice-centered liberation theology that the Vatican once criticized for its Marxist undercurrents, has died.

Pope Francis is still widely popular in several Latin American countries.

Pope Francis has offered extensive praise for China at the end of a trip through Asia.

The estimated crowd of 600,000 people Pope Francis' Mass in East Timor is nearly half of the small Southeast Asian country's population.

Pope Francis has indirectly acknowledged the abuse scandal in East Timor involving its bishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winning independence hero.

Pope Francis is wrapping up his visit to Indonesia after celebrating Mass before an overflow crowd of 100,000.

The president of East Timor sees Pope Francis’ upcoming visit as a prime opportunity to promote Asia’s youngest country on the world stage, not a time to confront the legacy of abuse by influential members of the clergy in the deeply Catholic nation.

When Pope Francis makes his trip to Asia's youngest country, East Timor, it will make him the second pope to visit after John Paul in 1989, and the first since the country gained independence from Indonesia in 2002.

When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church’s credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia’s newest country.

The Vatican is insisting at the close of a trial in London that it was the victim of a years-long fraud over its investment in a London property.

Five women who say they were psychologically, spiritually and sexually abused by a famous ex-Jesuit artist are asking Catholic bishops around the world to remove his mosaics from their churches.

Pope Francis recently hosted more than 107 comedians at the Vatican. Some of the A-listers who attended the event were Whoppi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon and Chris Rock, to name a few.

Vatican police have detained a former employee after he allegedly tried to sell a 17th century manuscript back to the Holy See.

Tech giant Cisco Systems has joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically.

A pair of nude feet — dirty, wounded and vulnerable — are painted on the façade of the Venice women’s prison chapel.

The Holy See has formally protested to France after a court there ruled that a former high-ranking Vatican official was liable for what the court determined to be the wrongful dismissal of a nun from a religious order.

Transgender Catholics are voicing disappointment with a new Vatican document rejecting the fundamental concept of changing one’s biological sex.

Pope Francis has led thousands of people in a moment of silence to pray for the aid workers killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza.

Pope Francis is presiding over the Vatican’s somber Easter Vigil service, a day after he made the last-minute decision to skip his participation in the Good Friday procession at the Colosseum as a health precaution.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has skipped the traditional Good Friday procession at Rome’s Colosseum to protect his health, adding to concerns about his frail condition during a particularly busy liturgical period.

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

The clergy sexual abuse scandal is slowly gathering steam in Italy.

Ukrainian and allied officials have criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.

One of the first women who accused a once-exalted Jesuit artist of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse has gone public.

Go into many bookstores, and the nonfiction shelves will be dominated by men.

Israel has formally complained after a senior Vatican official spoke of “carnage” in Gaza.

Pope Francis says if he can, he'll keep a promise to visit his native Argentina in the second half of this year.

The Nicaraguan government says it has released Bishop Rolando Álvarez and 18 Catholic clergy members from jail and handed them over to Vatican authorities.

The Vatican has concluded a lengthy investigation into allegations of misconduct by Archbishop John Nienstedt, the former leader of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

The Vatican next year will publish a collection of never-before-seen homilies delivered by the late Pope Benedict XVI.

Some Catholic bishops say they will not follow the Vatican’s new direction on allowing blessings for same-sex couples.

Pope Francis has urged Vatican bureaucrats to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality.

The Vatican document explicitly saying Catholic priests can bless same-sex unions lays out the conditions for how such blessings can and cannot involve.

Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples.

President Joe Biden plans to skip the upcoming climate talks in Dubai, an event that is expected to draw heads of state and diplomats from more than 200 nations and the Vatican.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is receiving antibiotics intravenously to treat a lung inflammation but that he doesn't have pneumonia.

The Vatican says Pope Francis went to the hospital for tests after he came down with the flu.

Pope Francis has met separately with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinians living through the war and set off a firestorm by using words that Vatican diplomats usually avoid: “Terrorism” and according to the Palestinians “genocide.”.

The head of the Catholic church in China has begun a trip to Hong Kong at the invitation of the city’s pope-appointed Roman Catholic cardinal, marking the first official visit by a Beijing bishop in history.

In the United States, the national conference of Catholic bishops rejects the concept of gender transition, leaving many transgender Catholics feeling excluded.

A judge at Britain’s High Court has ruled that life support for a terminally ill 8-month-old baby should be withdrawn at a hospice or hospital.