Abel Ferrara is directing the upcoming "Padre Pio," starring Shia LaBeouf, about the stigmatic saint of 20th-century Italy. The film centers itself around the rise of fascism in Italy.

Pope Francis has met with a fourth group of transgender people who found shelter at a Rome church, the Vatican newspaper reported Thursday. L’Osservatore Romano said the encounter took place Wednesday on the sidelines of Francis’ weekly general audience.

Pope Francis will travel next month to Kazakhstan, where he could meet with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has supported Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

“It’s not strange. It’s not a catastrophe. You can change the pope,” Pope Francis said while sitting in an airplane wheelchair during a 45-minute news conference.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights.

The documentation, published amid renewed debate about the legacy of the World War II-era pope, contains 2,700 files of requests for Vatican help from Jewish groups and families.

The pope has issued new regulations for the creation of religious groups, with the apparent intent of preventing anti-Vatican II and abusive organizations to form.

A new book, citing recently opened Vatican archives, suggests that Pope Pius XII avoided conflict with Nazis and that the Vatican worked hardest to save Jews who had converted to Catholicism.

Doctors have prescribed a wheelchair, cane and physical therapy. Pope Francis quipped that what he really needs for the pain is a shot of tequila.

Nick Ut, a retired Associated Press photographer, gave Pope Francis a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down the road after a napalm attack.