PHILADELPHIA – It takes just over nine hours to fly from Philadelphia to John Paul II Airport in Krakow, Poland, for travellers who want to attend World Youth Day July 26-31 in that city.

VATICAN CITY – An agreement between the Holy See and France handed responsibility for the church that towers above Rome's Spanish Steps to the French-founded Emmanuel Community.

VATICAN CITY – A mobile medical unit donated by the Vatican tours Rome's peripheries, offering free health care to those in need.

ROME – The Venezuelan bishops' conference will close its college for priests in Rome at least for the 2016-2017 academic year because of the economic difficulties facing the country, the seminary rector said.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has met the parents of an American teenager who died in suspicious circumstances just after he arrived to start a foreign study program.

VATICAN CITY – A former consultant to a pontifical commission who denied to a Vatican court that she leaked documents about the Vatican's financial reform to an Italian journalist had admitted to sending the documents when she was first interrogated, a Vatican policeman said.

VATICAN CITY – Italian journalist and author Gianluigi Nuzzi did not plot the release of leaked Vatican financial documents with another journalist and was well within his rights to publish the information he received from a Spanish monsignor, a defense witness told a Vatican court.

BONN, Germany – A German cardinal said names of candidates submitted to the Vatican as potential bishops are being vetoed by "unauthorized people" in Rome. 

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis will welcome several thousand homeless and vulnerable people from all over Europe when they make a pilgrimage to Rome in November.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Police raided a storeroom near St. Peter’s Square and seized a cache of Vatican souvenirs and trinkets including flags, bracelets and key rings bearing Pope Francis’ image.

When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is honoured next month at the University of Notre Dame, the icon of Catholic higher education in the United States, he will arrive amid sharp criticisms over his appearance.

VATICAN CITY – Dive into the world's problems with courage and help people turn their lives of desolation into abundance and hope, Pope Francis said.

ROME – Beneath a former vineyard near the legendary Appian Way lies one of the Italian capital’s untold secrets, a vast underground catacomb where Jews buried their dead nearly 2,000 years ago.

ROME – After less than 48 hours in Rome, "dream" is the word used most often by the six Syrian adults Pope Francis brought back to Italy with him from a refugee camp in Greece.

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM GREECE – When an aide suggested Pope Francis offer to fly some Syrian refugees back to Rome with him, the pope said he agreed immediately because it was "an inspiration of the Holy Spirit."