By Cindy Wooden Gazing from a hillside overlooking Rome's Colosseum, where thousands of people gathered to pray the Way of the Cross, Pope Francis said Christ's cross is God's response to evil in the world. "Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent. And yet, God has spoken," the pope said March 29 at the end of the nighttime prayer service. God...

Of the several widely acknowledged priorities in the run-up to the conclave that chose Pope Francis, including the challenge of secularism and the growth of the church in the global South, none was more prominent than a need to reform the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration in the Vatican.

With Jesus’ resurrection “love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious,” Pope Francis said in his first Easter message “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world).

Gazing upon the image of a crucified man on the Shroud of Turin, Catholics contemplate Jesus and are called on to remember his great love for them and for all who suffer, Pope Francis said.

In Easter messages, Catholic patriarchs in the Middle East highlighted the need for an end to the war in Syria, now entering its third year.

Catholics must allow the grace of their baptism and of the Eucharist to transform their lives and make them instruments of God’s grace in the world, Pope Francis said.

Nairobi Cardinal John Njue urged Kenyans to maintain peace as the Supreme Court decides on the nation’s disputed presidential election. He also urged Kenyans to accept the court verdict, expected March 30.

Pope Francis told young inmates that, just as Jesus came to help and serve others, he, too, was at their service as a priest and bishop. During the evening Mass at Rome’s Casal del Marmo prison for minors, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 young people of different nationalities and faiths, including at least two Muslims and two women, who are housed at the juvenile detention facility.

The sainthood cause for Father Joseph Walijewski, a La Crosse diocesan priest who established a Bolivia parish and a Peru orphanage on behalf of the diocese, has been officially opened.

Pope Francis called on the world’s priests to bring the healing power of God’s grace to everyone in need, to stay close to the marginalized and to be “shepherds living with the smell of the sheep.”