The Vatican has detailed laws and rituals to ensure the transfer of power when a pope dies or resigns, but not when he is ...

A scholar of global Catholicism writes how Francis has opened the church to the outside world in ways no pope had done before ...

Catholic cardinals gathered in Rome will offer a nightly rosary for Pope Francis as the pontiff remains hospitalized in ...

Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, has held his title for 12 years. What to know about the Jesuit.

A legislative gap in the Vatican's laws leaves Pope Francis in charge despite his severe illness. An initiative to rectify ...

Time-honored rituals, drafted and refined over centuries, allow for ritual mourning and provide order at a dramatic moment of ...

Pope Francis has received prayers worldwide while hospitalized with a respiratory illness and mild kidney insufficiency.

Pope Francis is still critically ill as he battles double pneumonia, but his condition has shown a "slight improvement", the ...

Pope Francis remained in critical condition as the Vatican called senior church officials in Rome to a special saying of the ...

Catholics around the world including at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Carmichael are praying for Pope Francis as he ...

The pope showed some slight improvements in recent tests, and as he continues to recover, members of the Catholic faith ...