Even so, Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider said claims of Pope Francis’ illegitimacy are unfounded.

Despite past tensions with Pope Francis and a period without assignment, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Pope Benedict XVI’s longtime secretary, has been appointed as the apostolic nuncio to Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

Spanish Jesuit Luis María Roma, who died in 2019, was recently discovered to have abused hundreds of Indigenous girls while serving as a missionary in rural Bolivia, and to have documented his acts in a diary.

Pope Francis and a nine member Council of Cardinals heard presentations from women experts on the role of women in the church through the lens of canon law.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, has ordered all public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms by the start of 2025, a move decried by much of civil society as a violation of the separation of church and state.

Frederick Douglass traveled to Ireland after escaping slavery in the U.S. and there was inspired by the politics of Irish nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell.