The passing of Pope Francis this month marked the end of a transformative time in the church. His leadership drew both support and criticism from Catholics...
Pope
Read U.S. Catholic coverage on the pope, featuring news, reflections, and insights on the lives and teachings of popes in the contemporary church.
What happens when the pope dies? Rituals surrounding the pope’s death begin with the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, or Camerlengo. The Camerlengo is a...
On Monday April 21, 2025, at age 88, Pope Francis passed away. He had recently spent 38 days in the hospital for double pneumonia. Elected to the papacy on...
Pope Francis is a pope of the poor and for the poor. However, he is not an academic revolutionary, an armchair critic propounding big theories. What the pope...
It did not come as a total surprise when Pope Francis, while visiting the United States in 2015, invoked the name of Dorothy Day. From the beginning of his...
I read our pope’s documents in Spanish to get an intimate sense of what he’s feeling. I also refer to him as Francisco, because as a Latin American and a child...
Like the pope’s encyclical letter on creation care, Laudato Si’, the apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum alludes to St. Francis of Assisi and his famous...
Laudate Deum is an astonishing short letter that is part scolding, part warning, part strict urging, and one hundred percent pastoral concern. Clearly a...
The recently released declaration “Fiducia Supplicans” has spurred quite the online discourse. With responses ranging from calls for schism to false assertions...
Two years after Pope Francis was elected, he told a Mexican television reporter that “I have a sensation that my pontificate will be short; four or five years;...
