The Gospel contains a great message of hope, “because it tells us that wherever we are lost and however we are lost, God always comes looking for us!” said the text for Pope Francis’ weekly general audience.

Pope Francis has raised the status of the Vatican’s diplomatic academy to an institute of higher learning that will issue academic degrees while also strengthening its focus on evangelization.

Pope Francis has ordered the suppression of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a Peru-based lay movement active across Latin America and the United States, and three related lay movements following decades of abuse allegations and internal investigations.

Pope Francis is going without supplemental oxygen for longer periods and is continuing therapy to recover his voice and to recover his physical strength, the Vatican press office said, but he also is increasing the number of private meetings he is holding with the heads of Vatican offices.

Catholic faithful do not “buy” Masses, but when a priest accepts an offering and promises to celebrate a Mass for that person’s loved one or other special intention he must do so, the Vatican said.

Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of one woman and five men, including Antoni Gaudí, the Spanish architect who designed the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

Writing in “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis said the Earth “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.”

Carrying the cross means more than bearing personal suffering — it means stepping into the pain of others and walking beside them, Pope Francis wrote at the start of Holy Week.

Two popes who played instrumental roles in building the world’s largest church now gaze at one another with renewed clarity in the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica.

The temptation to cling to the past — to hold on to what was, including something sacred — can keep believers from truly embracing the hope offered by the risen Christ, said the preacher of the papal household.