Pope Francis

Pope Francis named 21 new cardinals Sunday, significantly increasing the size of the College of Cardinals who will one day elect his successor.

The pope’s meeting with the Muslim leader in Jakarta comes during the first leg of an intense 11-day, four-nation tour in Asia and Oceania.

“The Pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms” during a closed-door discussion among bishops earlier this month, according to a Vatican press official.

Now that Pope Francis has OK'd priests blessing same-sex couples, LGBTQ+ Catholics are figuring out how to ask for these blessings and whether they want them.

The pontiff called surrogacy "deplorable." But one U.S. surrogate said the practice helps those who are unable to have children start a family.

Francis' planned Saturday address would have been the first time a pope had addressed a U.N. climate conference, which is taking place in Dubai.

Francis has now named nine batches of new cardinals in his 10-year papacy. Increasingly, the men who will vote for whoever succeeds Francis are churchmen supportive of his values.

"The pope is well. He's better than before,'' said Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the surgeon who performed the 86-year-old pontiff's operation on June 7.

The pope underwent "a laparotomy and abdominal wall surgery under general anesthesia" on Wednesday, the Holy See's official news portal says. The pope had complained of abdominal pain on Tuesday.

Catholic women's groups that have long criticized the Vatican for treating women as second-class citizens immediately praised the move as historic in the 2,000-year life of the church.