Canon lawyers are proposing new laws that will delineate the rules on papal retirement. Retired Pope Benedict XVI has had to trailblaze a path, as the last pope to step down was in 1294.

The resignation of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has sparked internal debate over the status and titles of former Popes. One group of canon lawyers and academics are working to draft a ruleset for this navigating papal resignations going forward.

The oldest member of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Jozef Tomko, died in Rome at the age of 98.

The pope shares St. Vincent of Lérins’s view on how doctrine can develop and how there can be growth in the expression and awareness of the faith and in morals “while always remaining faithful to its roots.”

“The ideal bishop does not exist,” Sister Reungoat said. But he has to be a shepherd who is “close to the people entrusted to him, he has to know how to involve priests, laity and religious, and people of different generations.”

“Being close to the created world is a way of being close to the creator, and that’s why sciences played such an important role in the apostolates of the Jesuits,” said the director of the Vatican Observatory.

Speaking at a conference on family, sexuality and marriage, Pope Francis said wanting to go back to the way things were in the past is not Christian.

Pope Francis asked his safeguarding commission to provide an annual audit of what the church is doing to protect minors and what needs to change.

Pope Francis formalized appointments to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and named new secretaries to the restructured Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

On the way back to Kyiv from Borodyanka, a town that had been under control of Russian forces, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski prayed amid the ruins and bodies of those killed, including by an unmarked mass grave, he told Vatican News on April 15.