Pope Francis understood the power of a simple touch.

Pope Francis is embarking this week on a five-day trip to Portugal for World Youth Day.

A French nun is charting an unprecedented period of reform in the Catholic Church as one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican.

Pope Francis has decided to give women the right to vote at an upcoming meeting of bishops.

Women aspiring to leadership in the Catholic church have long come to terms with the glass ceiling that exists in the male-dominated institution.

Pope Francis has named the French nun to a Vatican position that should give her a vote in any upcoming meeting of bishops, a small step forward in the long campaign of Catholic women to have a greater say in Catholic decision-making. Luis Marín de San Martín, over the weekend as undersecretaries in the office that organizes thematic, weeks-long meetings of bishops at the Vatican. “A door has been opened,” the head of the Synod of Bishops office, Maltese Cardinal Mario Grech, told the Vatican's in-house media. AdThe Vatican’s laity office has two female undersecretaries, Linda Ghisoni and Gabriella Gambino, while the Vatican’s office for religious orders counts Sister Carmen Ros Nortes as its undersecretary. But aside from them the Vatican hierarchy is exclusively male and Francis himself counts no women among his closest advisers.