The commission established to study the alleged apparitions of Mary at Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, reportedly voted overwhelmingly to recognize as supernatural the first seven appearances of Mary in 1981.

Father Uzhunnalil was kidnapped in Aden on March 4, 2016, in an attack in which four Missionaries of Charity and at least 12 others were killed at a home for the aged.

Ontario bishops spoke particularly about concerns that proposed Ontario laws and policies surrounding euthanasia currently offer no real guarantees of the freedom of doctors and nurses to conscientiously object to actively helping a person die.

At Rome's Basilica of St. Bartholomew, a shrine to modern martyrs, Pope Francis presided over an evening prayer service April 22, honoring Christians killed under Nazism, communism, dictatorships and terrorism.

Looking at the period 2010-2015, the global Catholic population increased by 7.4 percent.

Religious people must listen to one another and speak to each other as brothers and sisters, the pope said. "Listen and speak softly, peacefully, seeking the path together."

A more Christian, as well as more effective, approach to the global migration crisis would be to move from a concern about "national security" to a concern for "common security," said Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.

"The racial divide in the United States and, sadly, in the Catholic Church in the United States is not something of the past. It is very much something of the present," the bishop said.

Without a faith dimension, ideological and political notions of development will fail, even if they have some initial success, Cardinal Gerhard Muller said.

The pope asked 45,000 children to be silent and reflect on if there were times when they made fun of someone for how they looked or behaved.