In the first papal visit to South Sudan, Pope Francis is highlighting the plight of women in the young nation who face the world's highest material mortality rate and are subject to widespread sexual violence.

Before dawn, crews from Kinshasa's sanitary police brigade armed with crowbars and aided by a bulldozer, set on demolishing makeshift stalls that crowd a busy intersection and a main artery of the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital.

History was made when two living popes met. It remains to be seen whether Francis will change the course of the Catholic Church.

After more than 200 years at the Vatican Museum, fragments of Athens' Parthenon temple may soon return home to Greece.

Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma offered several Jewish people refuge from the Nazis in German-occupied Poland before being caught and killed. The Vatican now plans to beatify the pair before possible sainthood.

In the Catholic Church only the Pope can declare somebody a saint, but the process always starts with a popular movement - local people revering a person for their holy way of life. Christianity arrived in Cologne in the fourth century. Since then, a number of remarkable Christian women have left their mark on this west German city.

The head of the Catholic Church began a landmark, week-long tour to Canada to apologize to Indigenous survivors for the abuse at Church-run residential schools.

Pope Francis has criticized the war in Ukraine as a "cruel and senseless" conflict. In his Easter "Urbi et Orbi" address he also called for reconciliation among Israelis and Palestinians, and in other conflict zones.

Pope says he is no saint, reveals he danced tango in TV interview

A man interrupted Pope Francis' general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, shouting "This is not the Church of God" in English and waving a medical mask he had removed from his face before being taken away by police, a Reuters witness said.

Pope Francis said that those who are indifferent to the poor "offend God." In a Christmas season overshadowed by coronavirus worries, he also urged followers to value the "little things in life."

A boy walks unexpectedly and repeatedly on stage to say hello to Pope Francis during the weekly Wednesday audience at the Vatican. After the child walks on the stage for the third time, the Pope says he wishes to "thank this child for the lesson he taught" because "he has acted from the heart."