Nicole Winfield

Despite their rocky start, Argentina's President Javier Milei and Pope Francis appeared to have hit it off as they held their first meeting Feb. 12 amid speculation that the Argentine pontiff might finally go home for a visit later this year.

Pope Francis on Jan. 10 confirmed a new leader for India's Syro-Malabar Church in a step toward healing a decades-long liturgical dispute that became so dire that Francis recently threatened to excommunicate hundreds of priests.

A Vatican tribunal on Saturday convicted a cardinal of embezzlement and sentenced him to 5.5 years in prison in one of several verdicts handed down in a complicated financial trial that aired the city state’s dirty laundry and tested its justice system.

Verdicts are expected Dec. 16 for a cardinal and nine other defendants in the most complicated financial trial in the Vatican's modern history: a case featuring a Hollywood-worthy cast of characters, unseemly revelations about the Holy See and questions about Pope Francis ' own role in the deals.

Pope Francis says he wants to be buried in the Rome basilica of St. Mary Major, not in the grottoes of the Vatican like other popes, so he can be near his favorite icon of the Madonna.

Pope Francis said Dec. 6 he was feeling "much better" after a two-week bout of bronchitis but again asked an aide to read his remarks.

Pope Francis has punished one of his highest-ranking critics, Cardinal Raymond Burke, by yanking his right to a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary in the second such radical action against a conservative American prelate this month, according to two people briefed on the measures.

Pope Francis met separately Nov. 22 with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinians living through the war and begged for an end to what he called terrorism and "the passions that are killing everyone."

Pope Francis' recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in this working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic.

The Vatican signed an agreement Wednesday with German carmaker Volkswagen AG to gradually replace its auto fleet with electric vehicles as part of the Vatican's efforts to reduce its carbon emissions.

The converted monastery in the Vatican gardens that served as Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement home will once again house a small community of nuns.

Pope Francis has ordered the Vatican to reopen the case of a well-known priest-artist accused of sexually, psychologically and spiritually abusing adult women, and removed the statute of limitations on their claims, the Vatican said Oct. 27.

A famous priest-artist who was thrown out of the Jesuits after being accused of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse of women has been accepted into a diocese in his native Slovenia, the latest twist in a case that has implicated the pope and laid bare the limits of the Vatican’s in-house legal system.

The pope on Oct. 24 accepted the resignation of a Polish bishop whose diocese has been rocked for weeks by reports of a gay orgy involving a male prostitute in a priest's apartment.

Two Vatican trials are coming to a head this week and posing uncomfortable questions for the Holy See, given they both underscore Pope Francis' power as an absolute monarch and the legal, financial and reputational problems that can arise when he wields it.

Clergy sexual abuse survivors on Oct. 2 unveiled a proposed new church law calling for the permanent removal of abusive priests and superiors who covered for them, as they stepped up their outrage over Pope Francis' choice to head the Vatican office that investigates sex crimes.

A few years ago, Pope Francis told the head of the main Vatican-backed Catholic women's organization to be "brave" in pushing for change for women in the Catholic Church.

Five conservative cardinals from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas have challenged Pope Francis to affirm current Catholic teaching on homosexuality and women's ordination ahead of a big Vatican meeting where such hot-button issues are up for debate.

Women who say they were abused by a once-prominent Jesuit artist said Sept. 19 they had been revictimized by his superiors, saying Pope Francis' recent gestures and an apparent effort to exonerate him publicly showed church pledges of "zero tolerance" were just a "publicity stunt."