A culture of nonviolence will become more widespread when countries and citizens resort less and less to the use of weapons, Pope Francis said.

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.

The violence of school shootings “is perhaps one of the greatest forms of injustice that we routinely witness in our country. Lives are taken, hearts are broken and innocence is shattered all for nothing,” Catholic Extension said.

Republican West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice March 29 signed into law a measure supporters say will help mothers both during and after pregnancy.

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.