VATICAN CITY -- Concerned at the slow pace of adopting his reforms of the marriage annulment process, Pope Francis has established a Vatican commission to encourage and verify progress in the dioceses of Italy.

ASSISI, Italy -- With a pilgrim's staff and mantle, Pope Francis entered Assisi's Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels with 500 economically or socially disadvantaged people and the volunteers who walk alongside them.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis has appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini, an Italian member of the U.S.-based Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, to be secretary-general of the office governing Vatican City State.

VATICAN CITY -- Shame and sorrow are appropriate initial responses to the report on the extent of clerical sexual abuse in France, but the Catholic Church must move to action to protect children and to guarantee justice for victims and survivors, said Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna.

VATICAN CITY -- The Catholic Church's inability to make victims of abuse their top concern is a cause for intense shame, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY -- Three members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard have hung up their halberds rather than be vaccinated against COVID-19, and three others were temporarily suspended in early October as they were completing the vaccination cycle, the spokesman for the guards told a Swiss newspaper.

VATICAN CITY -- Recovering from colon surgery, Pope Francis briefly ran a fever late July 7, leading his doctors to perform a CT scan of his abdomen and chest the next morning to check for signs of infection.