Vatican

Pope Francis has named Dominican Sister Helen Alford, dean of the faculty of social sciences at the Angelicum University in Rome, to be president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

A nation’s welfare and social service systems are a reminder that everything is connected, and everyone is interdependent on each other, especially the younger and older generations, Pope Francis said.

The 86-year-old pope, who had been hospitalized since March 29 for treatment of bronchitis, stopped his car and got out to greet well-wishers and reporters waiting outside the hospital.

Pope Francis used his third day at Rome’s Gemelli hospital to visit children hospitalized in the oncology ward and to confer the sacrament of baptism on a tiny infant named Miguel Angel.

The Vatican’s prosecuting attorney has leveled additional charges against four of the defendants who have been on trial since July 2021 for their alleged roles in the Vatican’s failed investment in a property in London.

The Catholic Church formally “repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery,'” a Vatican statement said.