Robert Prevost has been elected the first pope from the United States in the history of the Catholic Church.

Black smoke has poured out of the Sistine Chapel chimney, indicating no pope was elected on the first ballot of the conclave to choose a new leader of the Catholic Church.

President Donald Trump has posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself dressed as pope.

Vatican workers have installed the simple stove in the Sistine Chapel where ballots will be burned during the upcoming conclave to elect a new pope.

Growing numbers of people are making bets on next week’s conclave to elect the next pope.

There are no official candidates for the papacy, but some cardinals are considered “papabile.”.

Roman Catholic faithful have begun visiting the tomb of Pope Francis.

Cardinals this week will start in-depth discussions on planning the conclave to choose Pope Francis' successor.

Hong Kong’s outspoken Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen has been allowed to leave the southern Chinese city to attend Pope Francis’ funeral in Vatican City.

Thousands of people have begun filing through St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their final respects to Pope Francis at the start of three days of public viewing ahead of his funeral.

The plight of migrants was one of Pope Francis’ top priorities.

Vatican News has reported that Pope Francis was thankful that he was able to greet throngs of people in St. Peter’s Square on Easter, a day before he died.

One of Pope Francis’ final encounters before his death was with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who visited the Vatican over the weekend.

The death of a pope triggers a centuries-old ritual to elect a new one.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance has met with the Vatican’s No. 2 official as they the sides spar over the U.S. crackdown on migrants.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance is in Rome for talks on tariffs with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.

Vice President JD Vance and his family will travel to Italy and India this week and next to meet with leaders and visit cultural sites.

Two of Pope Francis’ closest advisers are predicting that he will recover from pneumonia and that a “new stage” in his pontificate will open after he is released.

Pope Francis says in a letter to an Italian newspaper that his lengthy illness has made clearer to him the absurdity of war and the power of words to shape the truth and facts.

Pope Francis has entered his fourth week in the hospital with double pneumonia.

The Vatican says that Pope Francis remains in critical but stable condition.

Thousands of people have gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray for an ailing Pope Francis, expressing sorrow for his suffering, hope for his recovery and gratitude for his efforts to steer the Catholic Church in new directions.

The Vatican has detailed laws and rituals to ensure the transfer of power when a pope dies or resigns, but not when he is sick.

The president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council has said that the Trump administration’s decisions to freeze aid programs, deport migrants and block refugees will be “catastrophic” for Haiti.

Leaders of developing nations launched into the second-day of a U.N. climate summit to press rich industrialized countries to share their knowhow to fight global warming and ease the financial burdens they face.

The Holy See’s No. 2 official has confirmed the existence of a Vatican peace “mission” to try to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Vatican press office says that Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra have both tested positive for the coronavirus.

The European Commission has retracted internal communication guidelines that had proposed substituting the “Christmas period” with “holiday period” after an outcry by conservatives.

The Vatican’s Secretary of State has attempted to tamp down controversy over a Vatican diplomatic communication to Italy.

The Vatican secretary of state has intervened personally to shed light on one of the most sensational Vatican scandals of recent times: The 1998 murder of the Swiss Guard commander and his wife, purportedly by a disgruntled younger Swiss Guardsman who then took his own life.

ROME – Pope Francis has given the Vatican secretariat of state three months to transfer all of its financial holdings to another Vatican office following its bungled management of hundreds of millions of euros in donations and investments that are now the subject of a corruption investigation. The Vatican released the letter that Francis wrote to Parolin on Aug. 25 in which he announced he was stripping the secretariat of state of its ability to independently manage the money. Its financial holdings are now to be held by the Vatican's treasury office, known as APSA and incorporated into the Holy See's consolidated budget, Francis wrote. The outcome is essentially that which was sought years ago by Cardinal George Pell, Francis’ first economy minister who clashed with the secretariat of state over his financial reform and transparency efforts. Francis moved against his own secretariat of state amid a year-long investigation by Vatican prosecutors into the office's 350-million-euro investment into a London real estate venture.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the Vatican, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020. Pompeo is meeting Thursday with top Vatican officials, a day after tensions over U.S. opposition to the Vaticans China policy spilled out in public. The State Department sought to play down the differences, but tensions were palpable during Pompeo’s two-day visit to Rome. The disagreement on China comes as the Vatican is heading into delicate negotiations with Beijing to extend its controversial 2018 accord over bishop nominations. Pompeo spent about 45 minutes Thursday meeting in the Apostolic Palace with his Vatican counterpart, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.