He will have a joyful welcome but a difficult task - to challenge negative values while enabling a more African Catholic church.
Pope Benedict XVI waves as he is driven through a crowd during his weekly general audience, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, on June 2, 2010.
AP Photo/Andrew Medichini
Catholics disagree over how to adapt the church’s doctrine and practices, especially marriage, to different cultures.
Representatives from the First Nations Inuit and Metis communities, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, after their meeting with Pope Francis, on April 1, 2022.
AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino
Prayers and symbols have the power to bind people together, writes a religion scholar, and so it is important to understand the history and context of Good Friday prayers.
The ceremony for the beatification of Carlo Acutis, an Italian boy who died in 2006 of leukemia, is held Oct. 10 in front of the St. Francis Basilica in Assisi, Italy.
AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia
Italian teenager Carlo Acutis, who died at the age of 15, is on the path to becoming a saint. A scholar explains the long history of child saints in the Catholic Church.
Bishop Mark Seitz and priests from his diocese knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to honor George Floyd, El Paso, June 1, 2020.
Courtesy of Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters
Though often seen as socially conservative, the Catholic church has a strong progressive strain that can be traced back 50 years to Latin America’s liberation struggles.
A Good Friday procession in Riverdale, Maryland.
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
On Good Friday, Christians give thanks for their salvation, which they believe was made possible by the suffering of Jesus. But for Jews, it was common in the Middle Ages to be attacked with stones.
A 2013 photo that shows people holding a quilt for victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
David McNew/Reuters
While many American Catholics believe demons and exorcism to be part of a distant past, an expert explains how beliefs that sexual desires could be part of demonic temptation still persist.
Immaculate Heart College Art Department c. 1955.
Photograph by Fred Swartz. Image courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles.
Diane Winston, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
In the ‘60s, a Roman Catholic religious order, the Immaculate Heart Sisters, created a new vision of a religious community. Meghan Markle, engaged to Prince Harry, attended the high school founded by the nuns.