Sources: BBC
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of the United States is elected to the papacy on the fourth ballot and takes the name Leo XIV. He is the first pope from North America and the second from the Americas, after Pope Francis. A dual citizen of the United States and Peru, he also becomes the second South American pope. 2025-05-8
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, announces that Pope Francis has died early on Easter Monday, at the age of 88. 2025-04-21
Pope Francis begins his first papal visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He will also visit South Sudan on the same trip. 2023-01-31
Pope Francis prays for victims of the earthquake in Albania and sends “heartfelt condolences” to Albanian President Ilir Meta. The quake's epicenter is less than 20 miles from Tirana, the country’s capital city, which has a population of 900,000. Additional earthquakes occurred in southern Bosnia and the Greek island of Crete. 2019-11-26
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is sentenced to 12 months in detention for covering up child sexual abuse in the 1970s. Pope Francis appoints Port Pirie Bishop Gregory O'Kelly as Apostolic Administrator, but with special near-full powers to govern the Archdiocese, though for now Wilson is still the Archbishop. 2018-07-3
Pope Francis pleads for peace in a Christmas Mass in the Vatican. 2016-12-25
Mother Teresa, known for working with the desperately poor in India, is canonized by Pope Francis in a ceremony at the Vatican. 2016-09-4
Pope Francis appeals for peace in the Holy Land following his Angelus address at St. Peter’s Square. He exhorts all interested parties and all those with political responsibility not to spare efforts to achieve the cessation of all hostilities and the desired peace for the good of all. 2014-07-13
Pope Francis gives his first "Urbi et Orbi" speech calling for peace amidst the Syrian civil war and the 2013 South Sudan political crisis. 2013-12-25
Pope Francis presides at the closing Mass of World Youth Day 2013 at Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach for a crowd estimated at 3-million. 2013-07-28