“I’m an African American woman in a space that is doing the kind of work that…Christ is calling us to do,” Cynthia Bailey Manns, who will participate in the Synod on Synodality as a voting member in October, said in an interview.

Signaling the Vatican’s growing engagement in efforts to ensure the ethical development of new technologies, the Vatican has announced that “Artificial Intelligence and Peace” will be the theme for the next World Day of Peace.

“I have had two [face-to-face] meetings with Pope Francis, and other members of the government have met him, too,” Ukraine’s President Zelensky said in an interview. “I am most grateful to him for these encounters. He is helping us!”

After a five-day trip to Portugal, which recently came to terms with its own clerical sex abuse crisis, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church must abandon its practice of covering up abuse and instead be "very open" about how it is confronting the crime.

In his homily for the closing Mass at World Youth Day, Pope Francis preached on The Transfiguration and its lessons for young people. He also announced that there will be a Jubilee for young people in Rome in 2025 and that the next World Youth Day will be held in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, in 2027.

Though he did not mention Ukraine specifically, Pope Francis used his visit today to the Fátima shrine in Portugal to pray for peace.