After deadly attacks killed 15 people at a Catholic church and dozens more at a mosque in Burkina Faso, Pope Francis said places of worship must be respected.

On the inevitable day when Heaven calls and historians gather to assess Pope Francis’ pontificate the metaphor of a roller coaster will surely be invoked by some.

Months after throwing verbal jabs at Pope Francis along the campaign train, Argentine President Javier Milei brought smiles and cookies to the Vatican for his highly anticipated meeting with the pope Feb. 12.

Making a list of which sinners are welcome in the church and which sinners are not goes against the teaching of the Gospel, Pope Francis told an Italian newspaper.

Celebrating the birth of Jesus, the prince of peace, should mean making a commitment to opposing all war, to cherishing human life, feeding the hungry and speaking up for those who have no voice, Pope Francis said.

More than two millennia after the Holy Family was denied a room at the inn and Jesus was born in a manger, war once again renders his birthplace in the Holy Land inhospitable, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis condemned the Israeli military's killing of two Christian women sheltering at a Catholic parish in Gaza and an attack on a convent, noting that in the current fighting "unarmed civilians are targets for bombs and gunfire."

Pope Francis said he has decided to be buried in Rome's Basilica of St. Mary Major instead of in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican and that he has simplified the rites for a papal funeral.

At the brief meeting with participants in a seminar on the ethics of health care management, the pope said he was suffering from a "bronchial condition. Thank God it was not pneumonia," but he said it was a very serious bronchial infection.

"With great regret," Pope Francis has accepted his doctors' advice to not travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 1-3 and is looking at alternative ways the Vatican can participate in the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the director of the Vatican press office said.

Explaining that he had a "problem with inflammation of my lungs," Pope Francis led the recitation of the Angelus prayer from the chapel of his residence rather than from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square.

When Pope Francis visits Dubai in the United Arab Emirates Dec. 1-3 to address the opening of the UN Climate Change Conference, he will be the first pope ever to attend one of the global gatherings that began in 1995.

Pope Francis has invited a community of Benedictine nuns from Argentina to move into the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens, renewing the building's purpose as home to a cloistered community of women dedicated to supporting the pope's ministry with their prayer.

Pope Francis will travel to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates Dec. 1-3 to participate in the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the Vatican press office confirmed.

"War is a defeat," Pope Francis insisted as he called for prayers for peace in Israel and Palestine.