While Pope Francis’ condition has continued to improve, the Vatican announced that he will not lead his traditional Ash Wednesday services in Rome March 5.

Pope Francis, now hospitalized with severe respiratory issues, has been “broadly popular among the nation’s Catholics throughout his tenure,” according to multiple surveys conducted by Pew Research over the past 12 years.

Pope Francis’ clinical condition continued to improve Feb. 27, the Vatican said, and he had respiratory physiotherapy in the morning and the afternoon.

The office governing Vatican City State was set to have a new president March 1 and, while in the hospital, Pope Francis changed the office’s statutes to give the new president two top-level assistants.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Despite his illness, age and hospitalization, Pope Francis is still demonstrating his deep faith and exercising his role as pontiff, said a cardinal who once served as an auxiliary bishop of Rome. “The pope offers profound meaning to human suffering — that same suffering that he himself has always flagged as […]

Pope Francis’ condition showed “further slight improvement” in the previous 24 hours, the Vatican said in its evening medical bulletin Feb. 26.

To support the service of the Apostolic See and considering the current economic situation,” Pope Francis established a permanent Vatican commission dedicated to boosting donations to the Holy See through targeted campaigns.

For those who recognize Christ as the savior, death is not an end or a form of “annihilation,” Pope Francis wrote in his general audience catechesis. It is a kind of “sister” that introduces the faithful departed to true life.

Pope Francis has advanced the sainthood cause of Father Emil J. Kapaun, a U.S. Army chaplain who gave his life ministering to fellow soldiers in a North Korean prison camp.

Even after Pope Francis’ doctors said he was showing slight signs of improvement and the Vatican reported that he had met in the hospital with top aides to do some work, questions persisted about the possibility of his resignation.