The steady decline of birthrates across Europe and the West are signs of a new form of poverty that deprives humanity of a future, Pope Francis said.

Countries around the world must get serious about reforming their immigration policies to respect the rights of migrants and refugees and establish orderly procedures for welcoming newcomers, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis told older people to use retirement as a time to serve others and to sow the seeds of their wisdom.

After a long pandemic pause, Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate a Mass May 15 for the canonization of 10 men and women: five from Italy, three from France, one from India and one from the Netherlands.

Pope Francis said he is convinced God is calling his peers — older Catholics — to become “artisans of the revolution of tenderness.”

Pope John Paul I’s time as pope, although brief, remains an important example of the beauty and simplicity of faith, Pope Francis said.

Doing nothing to overcome the divisions among Christians means allowing tensions to fester and even feed conflict, Pope Francis said.

A footnote led to the rediscovery of a retreat for artists led by then-Bishop Karol Wojtyla, the future pope and saint, and to the Theology of the Body Institute’s first book produced by its new publishing arm.

Meeting with superiors general of women’s religious orders, Pope Francis arrived in a wheelchair — the first time he has used one publicly at the Vatican.

Warning that the Russian Orthodox patriarch should not “turn himself into Putin’s altar boy,” Pope Francis also said he would like to go to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin in an attempt to end the conflict in Ukraine.