Pope Francis got sick at the start of the Vatican’s Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Catholicism.

ROME—The pope looms so large in everyday Italian life that there are lots of expressions that make light of even a dark event like his death. “A pope dies, they make another,” goes one, suggesting how ...

BEFORE anything else and apropos to the title, a brief silence and a solemn petition to God for Pope Francis, who is battling ...