Pope Francis and his international Council of Cardinals continued their discussions about the role of women in the church, listening to women experts, including a professor who spoke about how culture impacts women’s roles and status.

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI dropped “Patriarch of the West” from his official titles. Vatican officials at the time said the title was removed because it was theologically imprecise and historically obsolete.

In a church that values tradition, the idea of “novelty” strikes some people as strange, and a reporter asked the cardinal if people could expect that in another 80 years the teaching in the document would change again.

Every diocese, Catholic religious order and institution in the world must have clear safeguarding guidelines and procedures and that they are publicly accessible, the new guidelines reaffirm.

The Vatican press office announced that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith’s declaration on human dignity, said to include a faith-based critique of “gender ideologies” and surrogacy, will be released April 8.

"Let us lift our eyes to him and ask that the power of his resurrection may roll away the heavy stones that weigh down our souls," the pope said in his homily on March 30.

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Pope Francis has dismissed the former bishop of Bruges, Belgium, from the clerical state 14 years after Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation following his admission that he sexually abused his nephew.

Pope Francis has not accepted an invitation to travel to Moscow in June to meet with Vladimir Putin, the director of the Holy See press office said.

Pope Francis wrote that “it is beautiful” when a penitent, reciting the Act of Contrition, recognizes that God is “all good and deserving of all my love.”