The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Pope Francis has dismissed the former bishop of Bruges, Belgium, from the clerical state 14 years after Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation following his admission that he sexually abused his nephew.

Pope Francis has not accepted an invitation to travel to Moscow in June to meet with Vladimir Putin, the director of the Holy See press office said.

Pope Francis wrote that “it is beautiful” when a penitent, reciting the Act of Contrition, recognizes that God is “all good and deserving of all my love.”

In a speech read by an aide, Pope Francis told a group of grieving parents that the best response to grief is “to imitate the emotion and compassion of Jesus in the face of pain.”

Pope Francis went from the audience to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for a checkup before returning to the Vatican. In November when he was suffering similar symptoms, he had gone to that hospital for a CT scan of his lungs.

After participating in a seminar on the Catholic Church and the Freemasons, an Italian bishop reaffirmed that Catholics who belong to Masonic lodges are in a “serious state of sin” and cannot receive Communion.

Pope Francis has canceled his appointments today after The Vatican press office announced he was experiencing “mild flu-like symptoms.”

During Lent, Pope Francis said, Catholics—and especially Catholic seminarians—should rediscover the joy of simplicity, and pay less attention to their appearance and more to their prayer lives.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, recently made comments regarding the death toll in Gaza that the The Israeli Embassy to the Holy See has defined as “regrettable.”