To be Christian is to be open and welcoming to others, Pope Francis said as he celebrated Mass outside Hungary's Parliament building.

Mentioning some areas of common ground with Victor Orbán’s government, Pope Francis described as “ideological colonization” efforts to promote acceptance across Europe of “so-called gender theory.”

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal gave Pope Francis a book of photographs documenting the damage inflicted by Russian bombings of his country in a war that has lasted 14 months already.

“Personally,” the archbishop told his audience, “I would not assist with a suicide, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions in which we find ourselves.”

A “breakdown in communication” led to permission being given to a group of Anglican clergy to celebrate the Eucharist in Rome’s Basilica of St. John Lateran.

In an apparent breach of the Vatican’s agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, the bishop of Haimen was installed as the bishop of Shanghai April 4.

Pope Francis went to Rome’s Gemelli hospital March 29 for “some previously planned tests,” the Vatican press office said, providing no further details.

Pope Francis has updated the procedures for investigating allegations of sexual abuse, expanding the rules of “Vos Estis” to include Catholic lay leaders, who have the same responsibilities over members as a bishop over priests.

With a “firm intention to proceed with measures to ensure that situations similar to those reported will not occur again,” Father Verschueren said the Jesuits will begin an internal process that “may result in disciplinary action.”

With the first anniversary of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine just days away, the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church spoke about gratitude and powerlessness in the face of a “blind, absurd, sacrilegious war.”