Pope Francis joined Giorgia Meloni in encouraging young Italians to have more children, saying, “Let us not resign ourselves to sterile dullness and pessimism.”

The Vatican’s main charitable organization, Caritas Internationalis, is hoping to open a new chapter this week, but the recently ousted head is fighting back, claiming the Vatican engaged in a “brutal power grab” fueled by a “colonialist” attitude.

“I’m available to do anything,” Pope Francis said. “There’s a mission that’s not public that’s underway; when it’s public I’ll talk about it.”

Francis' visit to Hungary is bringing him as close as he's come to the front lines of the war.

A Vatican statement said the 15th-century papal bulls, or decrees, “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples” and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.

The number of women working in the Vatican has increased during Pope Francis' 10 years as pope, though women still face resistance from certain members of the church.

A prominent Jesuit artist whose mosaics decorate churches around the globe has been barred from pursuing his artistic activity after 15 more people came forward with fresh accusations against him of spiritual, sexual and psychological abuse.

Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church.

The pope warned there's a risk that a reform process in the German Catholic Church over calls for married priests and other possible liberalizing reforms might become harmfully "ideological."

The pope acknowledged that he had needed to "wake up to cases that were all covered up."