The election of a Chicago-born pope with Louisiana Creole ancestry is drawing attention from Black Catholics, especially after genealogist Jari Honora traced Pope Leo XIV’s maternal grandparents to New Orleans’ Black Catholic community. 

Pope Francis, who took his name from the patron saint of ecology — St. Francis of Assisi — died the day before Earth Day and about five weeks before the 10th anniversary of his landmark encyclical on care for creation.

Pope Leo XIV has advanced the sainthood causes of two missionaries whose murders in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador led to the protection of remote Indigenous peoples from encroaching extractive industries.

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Auxiliary Bishop Michael M. Pham of San Diego to head the diocese.

Recognizing themselves as members of the one body of Christ, all Catholics should sense an urgency to share the Gospel message of God’s love with others and to welcome them as brothers and sisters, Pope Leo XIV said.

All the speeches and messages Pope Leo XIV has given since becoming pope May 8 are available on the Vatican website, which should be checked before sharing supposed quotes and videos, Vatican News said.

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance May 20 met Louis Prevost, the older brother of Pope Leo XIV, and his wife, Deborah Prevost, at the White House.

Sister Lucia spoke with OSV News May 16 from her monastery in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where she and two fellow Basilian sisters have remained throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing humanitarian and spiritual aid to civilians and military personnel alike.

The Gospel parable of the “wasteful sower” who casts seeds on fertile soil as well as on a rocky path “is an image of the way God loves us,” Pope Leo XIV told visitors and pilgrims at his first weekly general audience.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin received the Path to Peace Award at a May 19 gala dinner in New York, having addressed representatives at the United Nations headquarters to celebrate the election of Pope Leo XIV earlier that day.