Time-honored rituals, drafted and refined over centuries, allow for ritual mourning and provide order at a dramatic moment of transition.

Pope Francis spends “a peaceful night” at Rome‘s Gemelli Hospital and has breakfast while sitting in an armchair on Thursday morning, the Vatican tells journalists on Feb. 20.

When you visit Our Lady's Gifts in Little Italy, it feels like you are in a church. Maybe that's because it used to be one.

Pope Francis is alert and cheerful as he battles double pneumonia in hospital, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Wednesday after paying a visit to the ailing leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church.

As the pope enters his second week in a Rome hospital with a lung infection, his physicians said his condition was critical but not immediately life-threatening.