Pope Francis died April 21 after suffering a stroke and heart attack, said the director of Vatican City State’s department of health services. The pope had also gone into a coma.
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, attended the liturgy with his wife, Usha, a practicing Hindu, and his three children after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni earlier in the day.
Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of one woman and five men, including Antoni Gaudí, the Spanish architect who designed the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.
During his long and fruitful pontificate, St. John Paul II embraced the entire world, which stands yet again in need of his blessing, Cardinal Pietro Parolin said.
At the end of 2023, the number of Catholics in the world reached 1.405 billion, up 1.15% from 1.389 billion Catholics at the end of 2022, according to the Vatican’s Central Office of Church Statistics.
The Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life has published a pastoral framework to help dioceses strengthen and promote the pastoral care of human life.
Imagine being able to explore all of St. Peter’s Basilica, its artistic masterpieces and the saint’s underground tomb, and even have a go at restoring it—virtually, that is—and in the 3-D blocky world of Minecraft.
The church opposes “the ideology that usually accompanies so many sex-change decisions,” which Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández said is an ideology that claims “omnipotence” and refuses to recognize the reality of one’s body as a gift.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, shared that, “The pope is reminding every one of us, all people, starting with us elderly, that we are all frail and therefore we must take care of each other.”