The survival of the papacy has always been dependent on a precarious balancing act between the pope’s religious and secular ...

American prelate, an exploding battleship, and the Roman Question all fed into Pope Leo XIII's decision to publish his 1899 ...

Italy agrees to pay an indemnity (understood to be about $82,634,000) for the papal territory taken over by the government in 1870 ... men and women in the United States have declined during ...

From, the quiet of the Vatican Library, of which he became Prefect in 1914, he had been sent as Apostolic Visitor (later Papal Nuncio ... He was the first Pope since 1870 to emerge from the ...

Like his predecessors, Pope Francis was selected using an age-old method -- a system known as the Papal conclave.

The Catholic Church is almost 2,000 years old, and over the centuries, the protocol for papal funerals has been codified and refined into a seamless procedure. In the case of the pope’s death ...

Still, another reality emerges. The church may not have seen women as equals, but nevertheless, their work was key to the workings and finances of the papal court and its surroundings. The fact is ...

Pope Francis received a long round of applause at a Vatican summit on Monday after announcing he intends to make children the theme of a new papal document. Titled “Love Them and Protect Them ...

The Interregnum begins. Cardinals start gathering in Rome. By tradition, the body of the pope is dressed in papal vestments and will be put on display at St. Peter’s Basilica. Pilgrims will ...