The cultural and pastoral diversity among clergy is not a burden but a gift that should enrich communion within the church ...

When John Paul II was elected to serve as pope, he became the first and only pope to call Poland his native country and home. As such, he used his position and status to advocate the end of the Cold ...

A Mankato native who spent most of his journalism career covering the Vatican provided some dope on popes, his review of a ...

After the white smoke cleared, Brown papal historian David Kertzer reflected on the significance of an American pope, how the ...

Leo’s elevation broke the longstanding rule of thumb that no American, as a citizen of a superpower, could or even should ...

For Vatican standards, it was a particularly long meeting that took place yesterday morning in the papal studio, between ...

How will Leo’s formative three decades in the United States before life in Peru and Rome shape his church of 1.4 billion souls? Yes, the cardinals must be thinking an American could solve the Holy See ...

First, there was a workplace accident that occurred a few months ago: a worker, while working on the Vatican construction ...

While working at a Minneapolis hospital, the future pope saw “The Blues Brothers” at a Roseville theater and ate at Black Forest Inn.

John Paul II had been to Chicago before too, having visited Chicago's Polish neighborhoods as Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła in 1969 and 1976. But no pope had visited Chicago while in office before.

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, right, shakes hands with Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who would become known as Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Chicago on Aug. 2, 1976. (Walter Kale/Chicago ...

The papacy's first composite name was chosen by Cardinal Albino Luciani in 1978 to honor Pope John XXIII, who opened the Vatican Council II process that reformed the Catholic Church, and Paul VI, who ...