Pope John Paul II was visible head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 to 2005.
Pope Benedict XVI is a senior prelate of the Catholic Church who served as its head and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict chose to be known by the title "Pope Emeritus" upon his resignation.
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, the first to visit and hold papal mass in the Arabian Peninsula, and the first pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century.
Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez is the archbishop emeritus of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
Donald William Wuerl is an American prelate of the Catholic Church, and was Archbishop of Washington, D.C. from 2006 to 2018. He was elevated by Pope John Paul II to serve as Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle (1986–1987), and Bishop of Pittsburgh (1988–2006). He was named Archbishop of Washington by Pope Benedict XVI and made a cardinal by him in 2010. Wuerl was the subject of a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that praised and criticized how he handled sexual abuse cases during his time in Pittsburgh. Wuerl has denied mishandling the cases. On October 12, 2018, Pope Francis accepted his resignation as Archbishop of Washington, although Wuerl remains in charge of the archdiocese as its apostolic administrator until Pope Francis appoints his successor, and remains a member of the College of Cardinals, one of only ten American cardinals who could choose the next Pope.
Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport, also known as Tacloban City Airport, is an airport serving the general area of Tacloban, a highly urbanized city in Leyte island in the Philippines. It is the main gateway from Manila and Cebu to the Eastern Visayas Region in central east Philippines. It is classified as a Class 1 principal airport by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, the agency responsible for the operations of all the airports in the Philippines excluding the major international airports. As of 2017, Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport is ranked as the eighth-busiest and the third-fastest growing airport by passenger volume out of the 45 commercial airports in the Philippines.
Reinhard Marx is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church and chairman of the German Bishops' Conference. He serves as the Archbishop of Munich and Freising. Pope Benedict XVI elevated Marx to the cardinalate in a consistory on 20 November 2010. At the time of his elevation, Marx became the youngest member of the College of Cardinals, succeeding Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Budapest, who was elevated in 2003.
Lorenzo Baldisseri is an Italian cardinal. He has been the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops since 21 September 2013. He previously served as Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops after more than twenty years in the diplomatic service of the Holy See.
Pope Tawadros II is the 118th and current Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, succeeding the late Pope Shenouda III as leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. He took office on 18 November 2012, two weeks after being selected.
The Central African Republic conflict is a civil war in the Central African Republic (CAR) involving the government, rebels from the Séléka coalition, and anti-balaka militias.
Pope Francis has created cardinals at five consistories held at roughly annual intervals beginning in 2014. He has created 75 cardinals from 50 countries, 15 of which had never before had a cardinal, and the first Scandinavian since the Reformation.
Pope Francis made a state visit to the Philippines from January 15 to 19, 2015. He was the third pontiff to visit the Philippines, after Paul VI and John Paul II, and the first in the 21st century and 3rd millennium with the last visit by John Paul II in 1995. Besides Manila, Francis visited Tacloban and Palo, Leyte, to encourage the victims of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). John Paul II had also gone beyond Manila to Cebu, Davao, Bacolod, Iloilo, Legazpi, Bataan, and Baguio, from February 17 to 22, 1981. The Filipinos nicknamed Francis Lolo Kiko as a term of endearment, which he commended. Around 6–7 million attended Francis' final Mass at Luneta, surpassing the crowd at World Youth Day 1995 in the same venue. The theme of Francis' 2015 visit was "Mercy and Compassion".
The Young Pope is an Italian-Spanish-French drama television series created and directed by Paolo Sorrentino for Sky Atlantic, HBO, and Canal+. The series stars Jude Law as the disruptive Pope Pius XIII and Diane Keaton as his confidante Sister Mary, in a Vatican full of intrigues. It was co-produced by European production companies: Wildside, Haut et Court TV, and Mediapro.
The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy was a Roman Catholic period of prayer held from 8 December 2015, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, to 20 November 2016, the Feast of Christ the King. Like previous jubilees, it was seen by the Church as a period for remission of sins and universal pardon focusing particularly on God's forgiveness and mercy. It was an extraordinary Jubilee because it had not been predetermined long before; ordinary jubilees are usually celebrated every 25 years.
Pope Francis visited Kenya from 25 to 27 November 2015. It was his first state and pastoral visit to the country and the continent of Africa at large. Francis is the second pontiff to visit Kenya after John Paul II who visited Kenya 3 times. In his visit, he met the president of the Republic of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, held meetings with various members of the clergy, held an open mass at the University of Nairobi and visited a poor slum neighbourhood of Kangemi. As a result of his visit, most of the roads in Nairobi were closed on Thursday and parts of Friday
The Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lord's Transfiguration, also known as Palo Metropolitan Cathedral or simply Palo Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic church located at Palo, Leyte in the Philippines belonging to the Vicariate of Palo under the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Palo.
Central African Republic–Holy See relations refers to the current and historic relationship between the Central African Republic and the Holy See. Diplomatic relations between the two states were established in 1967, but only in recent years they have been increasing their cooperation, with high level visits being made by Pope Francis and President Faustin-Archange Touadéra to each other's countries.
