The appointments are part of an ongoing effort to give a greater role to women in the work of the Roman Curia offices, the central administration of the Catholic church.

The pope’s first comments on Syria since the missile attacks

Pope Francis admitted that he had badly misjudged the situation in Chile, or as he put it: “I fell into serious errors in the evaluation and perception of the situation, due especially to the lack of true and balanced information.”

Francis' “modest goal” is “to re-propose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time.”

Msgr. Carlo Cappella, who had served in the Vatican embassy in Washington, D.C., has been under criminal investigation since his recall from the U.S. last September.

Pope Francis' third apostolic exhortation will emphasize “the call to holiness in the contemporary world,” echoing Vatican II's “Lumen Gentium.”