After the Vatican said Pope Francis was hospitalized for a pulmonary infection March 29, Catholic bishops in the United States called on the faithful to pray for the Holy Father’s recovery.

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.

After spending the night in the hospital, Pope Francis is “steadily improving” from a respiratory infection and continuing his planned course of treatment, the Vatican press office said.

Like St. Paul, Christians must not only know Jesus with their heads but invite him into their hearts through a personal encounter with Christ, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis went to Rome’s Gemelli hospital March 29 for “some previously planned tests,” the Vatican press office said, providing no further details.

Pope Francis called the deadly shooting at a school in Nashville a “senseless act of violence” and prayed that the grieving families hold strong to their faith and “bring good out of unspeakable evil.”

Pope Francis prayed for the victims of a “tragic” fire that killed at least 38 people and injured some 29 others at a migrant processing center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, March 27.

In a world where “there is no shortage of hotbeds of hatred and revenge,” Pope Francis told priests and seminarians that “we confessors must multiply the ‘hotbeds of mercy,'” by making it easy for people to access the sacrament of reconciliation.

Recognizing how war and political differences can increase Christian divisions, believers must keep their focus on Christ and his Gospel, said members of a delegation of the World Council of Churches that met with Pope Francis.

Clericalization led to the separation of the clergy from the faithful in the church’s liturgy celebrated before the Second Vatican Council, said Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household.