After Oct. 15, 53% of the cardinal electors will have been appointed by Francis.

Heading home from his trip to Africa, the pope criticized “schools of rigidity” in the church but said he welcomed criticism and did not see a U.S. schism as imminent. America’s Vatican correspondent, Gerard O’Connell, reports.

Join us for a conversation with three of the most recent U.S. Ambassadors to the Holy See as we commemorate the 35th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the United States and the Vatican.

Pope Francis encouraged the Mauritian people to support “a better division of income and the integral promotion of the poor” and “not to yield to the temptation of an idolatrous economic model that sacrifices human lives on the altar of speculation and profit alone.”

An English translation of the pope's prayer in Madagascar.

“Our young people are our foremost mission! We must invite them to find their happiness in Jesus,” the pope said at Mass for 368,000 Catholics.