Laypeople are not passive members but active participants in the Church’s mission, called to live and spread the Gospel in everyday life, Pope Leo XIV said.

Pope Leo XIV has called on Catholics to pray for priests who find themselves in crisis and to “support those who so often support us.”

Modern cultural influences, including technology and shifting views on identity, risk weakening human relationships and spiritual development, said Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Pope Leo XIV will carry the cross himself through all 14 stations of the Way of the Cross at Rome’s Colosseum on the first Good Friday of his pontificate.

Pope Leo XIV has appointed four U.S.-based scholars and leaders as members of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development.

Pope Leo XIV named Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the substitute secretary for general affairs at the Vatican Secretariat of State, as the apostolic nuncio to Italy and the Republic of San Marino, the Vatican said.

Marking the start of Holy Week, Pope Leo XIV used his first Palm Sunday Mass to issue a forceful plea for peace, urging an end to war as he reflected on Christ’s Passion.

In the principality known for super yachts and sports cars, Pope Leo XIV urged Monaco’s wealthy citizens to remember the poor and protect every human life, calling on them to remember that the Last Judgment “places the poor at its center.”

As Pope Leo XIV prepares to visit Monaco March 28, Americans will no doubt be reminded of another U.S.-born Catholic monarch — the actress-made-princess Grace Kelly, who lived in Monaco following her marriage to its Sovereign Prince Rainier III in April 1956 until her untimely death in 1982.

The Vatican’s top diplomat to the United Nations condemned modern and historical slavery — while countering what he called a “partial narrative” in a newly adopted U.N. resolution denouncing the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity.”