King Charles III landed in Rome Wednesday for a state visit to the Vatican, where he will meet Pope Leo XIV and make history as the first British monarch to pray publicly with the pontiff since the Church of England broke away from Catholicism 500 years ago.

During his first official visit with Italian President Sergio Mattarella on October 14, Pope Leo addressed what he described as a troubling decline in birth rates across Europe, specifically highlighting Italy’s ongoing population crisis.

The Holy Father will designate Newman as an official co-patron saint of education, together with St. Thomas Aquinas.

VATICAN CITY -- VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV met Monday for the first time with an organization of clergy abuse survivors and advocates, who said he agreed to maintain a permanent dialogue with them as they press for a zero-tolerance for abuse policy in the Catholic Church.

The Italian nuns canonized are Vincenza Maria Poloni, the 19th-century founder of Verona's Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, which cares primarily for the sick in hospitals, and Maria Troncatti of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

COMMENTARY: Like his Polish predecessor, the first American Pope stresses the complementarity of reason and faith.

Pope Leo met with survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy for the first time on Monday, participants said, days after the Vatican's child protection commission accused senior Church leaders of being too slow to help victims.

A new exhibit at the Old Ursuline Convent Museum traces the Pope’s Creole ancestry through centuries of New Orleans church records.