President Donald Trump participated April 21 in an event called “America Reads the Bible,” speaking by prerecorded video message to read from Scripture.

Pope Leo XIV arrived April 21 in Equatorial Guinea, the fourth and final country of his 11-day apostolic journey in Africa, where the pope met the country’s longtime ruler and urged the country’s civil authorities to choose justice over power, quoting St. Augustine’s “City of God.”

On the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ death, Pope Leo XIV praised his predecessor’s “courageous witness” as “a significant heritage for the Church.”

Flying over the west coast of central Africa on April 21, Pope Leo XIV paused to honor his predecessor on the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ death, remembering the Argentine pope’s witness to mercy and closeness to the poor.

One year ago today, Pope Francis died at 7:35 a.m., April 21, 2025.

As the one-year anniversary of Pope Leo XIV’s election to the papacy approaches, here is a selection of 12 quotes from the new pontiff on various topics, looking back over the 12 months since he became pope May 8, 2025.

Pope Leo XIV traveled to the heart of Angola’s diamond country April 20, urging the tens of thousands gathered at the papal Mass in the country’s northeast to trust that “Christ hears the cry of the people” in the face of evil.

A new poll certainly tells the Catholic Church what it wants to hear: That 67% of Catholics who haven’t been to confession in the past year are open to returning, with roughly half expressing a clear desire to return.

Pope Leo XIV has donated $100,000 to provide access to clean water in El Salvador, supporting a program launched by the papal nuncio to that nation and by Catholic Relief Services, the official humanitarian and development agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pope Leo XIV led tens of thousands of Angolan Catholics in praying the rosary April 19 at southern Africa’s most visited Catholic shrine, calling the pilgrimage site a place where “the heart of the Church” is “alive and beating.”