Associated Press

Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip, a pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon that would be delicate under any circumstances but is even more fraught given Mideast tensions and the media glare that will document history's first American pope on the road.

With peak holiday travel starting just after the government shutdown's flight restrictions, hope for a moment of peace at an airport can feel like a wing and a prayer. But quiet and worship are just what airport chapels have provided for decades to travelers and to the airport workers that many were originally designed for.

As Pope Leo XIV prepares to embark on his first trip abroad with a visit to Turkey to mark a key event that shaped the foundations of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, there has been a surge of renewed optimism over the possible reopening of a Greek Orthodox religious seminary that has been closed since 1971.

Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of a Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s. It is the first known time the new pontiff has removed a bishop accused of abuse.

"The children who were able to escape have scattered, some of them ran back to their houses," said a man who said that four of his grandchildren were abducted. 

Two Roman Catholic priests who were imprisoned on what human rights officials said were politically related charges were released from prison Thursday following talks with the Vatican, officials said.

Centuries of church schisms show that if there's a doctrine to be fought over, there's a good chance Christians will fight about it. That repeated splintering is what makes the Council of Nicaea — a meeting of bishops 1,700 years ago in present-day Turkey — so significant today. And why Pope Leo XIV is traveling on Nov. 28 to the site of this foundational moment in Christian unity as part of his first major foreign trip as pope.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's letter asked that Pope Leo formalize Pope Francis' informal arrangement in which Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi had served as a personal papal envoy for humanitarian issues.

Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday strongly backed U.S. bishops who condemned the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, as he urged the American people to listen to them and treat migrants humanely.

For the one-in-three people extremely vulnerable to impacts from rising global temperatures, "climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity," Pope Leo said in his second message to the COP30 United Nations climate change conference in Brazil.

A 15th-century Bible which is considered one of the most spectacular examples of Renaissance illuminated manuscripts went on display in Rome on Thursday as part of the Vatican's Holy Year celebrations.

The union said that the regulation that led to the couple's dismissal would be deemed unconstitutional in Italy.

Some 7,800 students from more than 100 tribes were sent to the Carlisle, Pa., school as the U.S. government systematically and violently evicted Native Americans from their lands to seize them for white settlers.

Proposals for a national cathedral had been put forward for more than a century, but its fruition was hampered by two world wars and the decades of communist rule, which sought to suppress religion.
 

The orange flower has become a symbol of the country’s celebrations that take place every Nov. 1 and 2. Also known as the "flower of the dead", the cempasuchil is believed to be a point of connection between the worlds of the dead and the living, with bright petals that light the path of dead souls to the altars set out by their family.

Pope Leo XIV acknowledged Wednesday that there had been misunderstandings and conflicts with Jews over Israel's war in Gaza. But he strongly confirmed the Catholic Church's condemnation of antisemitism and commitment to fighting it as part of Christians' Gospel-mandated friendship with the Jewish people.

Pope Leo XIV will pray at the site of the 2020 port blast in Beirut that killed over 200 people and compounded Lebanon's economic and political crisis during his first foreign trip as pope next month that will also take him to Turkey to mark an important anniversary with Orthodox Christians.

The immigration raids have upended lives and worship at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart. Families grieve for missing loved ones. Attendance at Masses, which are held in several languages, has dropped dramatically, visible in the many empty pews under the domed church's colorful mosaics.

Pope Leo XIV urged Catholic teachers on Tuesday to focus less on pre-professional outcomes and more on educating students to have rich spiritual lives and use technology in ways that keep human dignity front and center.