Hours after Israel's Foreign Ministry posted a condolence for the passing for Pope Francis, it was deleted without explanation.

Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield, who covered Pope Francis at the Vatican during his entire pontificate, earned the nickname “la prima della classe” -- or “the first in class” -- from him in 2018.

Heads of state and royalty will begin converging on Rome for Pope Francis’ funeral in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, but the group of poor people who will meet his casket in a small crosstown basilica are more in keeping with Francis’ humble persona and disdain for pomp.

The clash in style between Donald Trump and Pope Francis and their positions on migration, the environment and poverty will come into sharper focus as the president travels to Rome for Francis’ funeral.

The legendary attorney who was once deemed the “chief counsel” of the Civil Rights Movement by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been honored with a statue outside the Alabama State Bar Association.

The man who would become Pope Francis always bought his shoes in the same place.

Gaza's Health Ministry says Israeli strikes have killed at least 50 people, many of them women and children.

Hong Kong’s outspoken Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen has been allowed to leave the southern Chinese city to attend Pope Francis’ funeral in Vatican City.

The papacy of Pope Francis ended with the same core doctrine for LGBTQ+ people that he had inherited.

So many people lined up to see Pope Francis lying in state at St. Peter’s Basilica that the Vatican kept the doors open all night, closing for just one hour from 6 a.m. until 7 a.m. Thursday.

The pastor of a Georgia megachurch who led a nationwide 40-day “fast” against Target stores is now calling for a “full Target boycott.”.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is establishing a task force to investigate employee reports of alleged anti-Christian bias.

Some Black churches are pledging to support the National Museum of African American History and Culture following an executive order by President Donald Trump alleging exhibits there and at other Smithsonian Institution sites have expressed a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”.

Antisemitic attacks around the world have increased dramatically since the war in Gaza began, but have declined slightly from a peak directly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel, according to an annual report from Tel Aviv University.

The body of Pope Francis was moved Wednesday morning to St. Peter’s Basilica for three days of public mourning for an Argentine pontiff remembered for his humble style, concern for the poor and insistent prayers for peace.

Pope Francis had a learning curve on clergy sexual abuse, with the turning point coming in 2018.

Thousands of people have begun filing through St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their final respects to Pope Francis at the start of three days of public viewing ahead of his funeral.

An Arizona jury found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty Tuesday of conspiring to murder her estranged husband.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is signaling support for the religious rights of Maryland parents who want to remove their children from elementary school classes using storybooks with LGBTQ characters.

Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world when he announced his resignation in 2013, the first in 600 years.

A new AP-NORC poll finds about three-quarters of U.S. adults say their household contributed at least some money to a charitable organization.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 17 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, and destroyed bulldozers and other heavy equipment that had been supplied by mediators to clear rubble.

Pope Francis never set foot in his native Argentina during his papacy.

The Anti-Defamation League says the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States reached a record high last year.

The plight of migrants was one of Pope Francis’ top priorities.

In his landmark 2015 encyclical “Praised Be,” Pope Francis cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern.

The death of Pope Francis has sent shockwaves through Iraq’s Christian community, where his presence once brought hope after one of the darkest chapters in the country’s recent history.

Vatican News has reported that Pope Francis was thankful that he was able to greet throngs of people in St. Peter’s Square on Easter, a day before he died.

Pope Francis’ funeral has been set for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, and a viewing of his body will begin on Wednesday in St. Peter’s Basilica, days after the popular pontiff died at age 88.

Eighty years after the Holocaust, more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive, but according to a study 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years.

A change in popes is a complicated process, with centuries-old rituals involving the transition in leadership for both the spiritual head of the global Catholic Church and the Vatican’s head of state.

Every pope has his critics.

An Irish-born American cardinal was entrusted by Pope Francis to be the camerlengo, the Vatican official who runs the Holy See after the death of one pontiff and before the election of another.

The faithful in Pope Francis’ hometown lit candles in the church where he found God as a teenager.

In the last 18 months of his life, Pope Francis had a frequent ritual: He would call the lone Catholic church in the Gaza Strip to see how people huddled inside were coping with a devastating war.

Pope Francis understood the power of a simple touch.

One of Pope Francis’ final encounters before his death was with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who visited the Vatican over the weekend.

Even though cardinals don’t campaign for the job, there are always front-runners going into a conclave to choose the next pope.

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88 after suffering a stroke, setting off mourning in the Catholic world and days of ritual at the Vatican.

The Vatican says the canonization of the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis, has been postponed due to the death of Pope Francis.

The death of a pope triggers a centuries-old ritual to elect a new one.

Tributes to Pope Francis are pouring in from around the world.

The death of a pope sets in motion a series of carefully orchestrated rites and rituals well before the conclave to elect his successor begins.

Pope Francis had an informal, lighthearted speaking style.

Pope Francis was the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit pontiff and the first to take the name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi.

Pope Francis changed the Catholic Church’s teaching in areas such as the death penalty and nuclear weapons.

The first pope from the Americas was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Dec. 17, 1936.

Pope Francis has died at age 88.

Pope Francis has died at age 88.

A Pentecostal church in South Africa has celebrated Easter Sunday with mass wedding ceremonies for around 3,000 people, with many of them making polygamous marriages.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance has met briefly with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday as the pontiff recovers from pneumonia.

Pope Francis has emerged from his convalescence on Easter Sunday to bless people in St. Peter’s Square and treat them to a surprise popemobile romp through the square.

The Community United Methodist Church in Pacific Palisades burned down in wildfires that devastated much of Los Angeles in January.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has “no choice” but to continue fighting in Gaza.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance has met with the Vatican’s No. 2 official as they the sides spar over the U.S. crackdown on migrants.

Eastern and Western churches will celebrate Easter on the same day this year, while marking 1,700 years since the Council of Nicaea unified Christian doctrine.

Every year, crowds fill the streets of the central Mexican town of Atlixco on the Catholic holiday of Good Friday to witness the sight.

Four months after its reopening, Notre Dame Cathedral hosted an emotional Easter ceremony Friday centered on the Crown of Thorns relic.

James Gunn’s upcoming film “Superman” is generating conversations about the place and relevance of this superhero who turned 87 on Friday, observed as Superman Day.

James Gunn's upcoming film “Superman” is generating conversations about the place and relevance of this superhero who turned 87 on Friday, observed as Superman Day.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance is in Rome for talks on tariffs with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.

Israeli airstrikes across Gaza have killed at least 25 people including children as the new U.S. ambassador to Israel made his first public appearance in Jerusalem.

When nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed an open letter last week calling for an end to the war in Gaza, the military responded immediately, saying it would dismiss any active reservist who signed the document.

The recent launch of a website dedicated to frescoes in a Maine meeting house has created a new surge of interest in the paintings.

Thousands of Catholics are making the trek to a historic adobe church in the hills of northern New Mexico as part of a Holy Week tradition spanning generations.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion was the target of an arson attack last weekend, but the attacker's motives are unclear.

Aid groups are raising new alarm over Israel’s blockade of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Pope Francis has visited Rome’s main prison and kept an Easter season appointment to spend Holy Thursday among the least fortunate.

Stitch by stitch, artisans have worked for months on the elaborate garments that will debut this week in Holy Week processions across Guatemala and beyond.

More than 9,000 Catholic employers do not need to abide by federal regulations protecting workers who seek abortions and fertility treatments under a ruling issued this week by a federal judge.

Authorities investigating why a man set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence are probing whether the suspect targeted the Democrat because of his Jewish faith or positions on Israel’s war in Gaza.

In the U.S. capital, hundreds of Ethiopians dressed in white tunics gather at the DSK Mariam Church to chant and pray in an ancient liturgical language of one of the oldest branches of Christianity.

Tens of thousands of people have gathered at the holiest Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem for the traditional priestly blessing.

A clandestine opposition movement remains active in Nicaragua, but options for restoring democracy in the Central American country are dwindling.

A Hamas official says that the Palestinian militant group is sending a delegation to the Gulf Arab state of Qatar to continue the indirect ceasefire talks with Israel.

As the Christian world commemorates Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday, the State Department has issued an appeal for its employees to report instances of alleged anti-Christian bias, including actions taken for opposition to vaccines or personal pronoun choice, that may have occurred during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

Turkey has begun a new phase in sweeping restorations of the nearly 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, focusing on preserving the monument’s historic domes from the threat of earthquakes.

A convalescing Pope Francis has greeted the crowd in St_ Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday, wishing more than 20,000 faithful a “Happy Palm Sunday, Happy Holy Week."

The internet has offered up a host of alternatives as egg prices continue to be stubbornly high.

Relatives of hostages in Gaza say they feel the absence of their loved ones acutely during Passover, which commemorates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their liberation from slavery.

Members of a 104-year-old Pasadena synagogue that was burned down in the Los Angeles fires in January are getting ready to celebrate Passover.

Pope Francis met privately with King Charles III and Queen Camilla at the Vatican during the royal couple’s four-day state visit to Italy and on the occasion of their 20th wedding anniversary.

Preparations for widely popular Lent and Holy Week processions are underway across Latin America – but not in Nicaragua.

Passover celebrations this year will again occur amid anxieties and divisions among many Jews related to the unresolved Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza and the specter of widespread antisemitism.

An Israeli airstrike on a residential block in northern Gaza killed at least 23 people, health officials in the Palestinian territory say.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the Vatican has defended many of the administration’s foreign-aid cuts at a Senate hearing, even while saying Catholic charitable groups are well-equipped to deliver such aid efficiently.

For more than 50 years, Father Spyridon has prayed, worked and welcomed the faithful in a monastery carved into a cliffside high above the Aegean Sea.

Palestinian medics say Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight and into Tuesday have killed at least 25 people.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half-century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children.

Israel has dramatically expanded its footprint in the Gaza Strip since relaunching its war against Hamas last month.

Moroccans are protesting Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza and U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to displace Palestinians and clear the territory for development.

Pope Francis has made a surprise entrance to St. Peter’s Square during a special Jubilee Mass for the sick and medical workers in his first public appearance at the Vatican since leaving the hospital.

With the upcoming canonization of its first millennial saint, the Catholic Church has turned to police in Italy to investigate the online sale of some purported relics of Carlo Acutis.

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, Florida’s Todd Golden and Duke’s Jon Scheyer are basketball rivals at the Final Four with a unique thread of connection.

Disgraced former Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has died.

Israeli strikes have killed more than a dozen people in the Gaza Strip as Israel sends more ground troops into the Palestinian territory to ramp up its offensive against Hamas.

Sitting under stained glass windows around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as burly wresters body-slammed and threw one another to the floor.

A crackdown on foreign students is alarming college leaders, who say the Trump administration is using new tactics and vague justifications to push some students out of the country.

Church officials say a Catholic priest has been shot and killed in the northeastern Kansas town of Seneca.

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.