Pope Francis said Sunday he was late to his weekly Angelus prayer because he had been stuck in a Vatican elevator and had to be freed by firemen.

China has ordained its first bishop since reaching an agreement with the Catholic Church intended to encourage a rapprochement between Beijing and the Holy See.

Pope Francis on Saturday joined Morocco's King Mohammed VI in saying Jerusalem should be a "symbol of peaceful coexistence" for Christians...

Pope Francis asked Saturday that major oil and gas companies respect the 2015 Paris climate agreement to help protect the poor from global warming.

A Nigerian bishop whom Pope Francis had fiercely defended has resigned after a five-year, sometimes violent, standoff with rebel priests and faithful who rejected him as an ethnic outsider, the Vatican said on Monday.

The Vatican said Sunday it had been forced to oust its former auditor general -- who resigned without explanation in June -- because he had been spying on senior officials.

The Vatican's former auditor general, who resigned without explanation in June, said Sunday he was forced out after his investigations into possible illegal activity hit too close to home.

Former leprosy sufferers testified Friday at a Vatican conference about the stigma linked to the disease which still persists in some societies, and about their attempts to fight exclusion.

The crowd of sick and handicapped faithful had come to Rome for the jubilee which ran from Friday to Sunday.

Pope Francis is considering a visit to Cuba in September as part of a trip that will also take him to the United States, the Vatican announced on Friday.

The Vatican said Wednesday it had signed an agreement to share financial information with Italy in a bid to stamp out tax evasion within the once-secretive city state.