Pope Francis said Sunday he is ready to go anywhere, anytime to meet with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church — even while acknowledging that he doubts the day will ever come that Catholic and Orthodox theologians will agree to end the 1,000-year schism.

A couple of days ago, Pope Francis had stated that the theories of evolution and the big bang, which is today thought of as the origin of the world, "is not inconsistent with the notion of creation" and that it was possible to believe in both evolution and the Catholic church's teaching on creation. 

Pope Francis has doubled down on his progressive stance toward including gays in the Roman Catholic Church after conservative bishops stymied his efforts.  Francis shared his remarks after the bishops rejected a report from last week containing language they deemed too favorable to gays.

Pope Francis is picking up where Pope Benedict left off, drawing the Holy See into the global search for solutions to religiously inspired terrorism

What could bring together the biggest names in the Korean pop industry? A visit by the Pope will do it.  As Pope Francis tours South Korea through August 18, some 20 Korean household names got together to record a video for a song titled "Koinonia," which means camaraderie and communion in Greek.

For the Argentine Francis, who was chosen to lead the world’s Catholics in part because of his allure for people in South America, a stronghold of the faith, South Korea presents an important test of whether his popularity there and in the United States and parts of Europe transfers to Asia.

The US president leads the pack of world leaders on Twitter, according to a new report, blowing by the competition with an about 43.7 million followers.  Next closest is Pope Francis at 14.1 followers, although the pontiff was named the most influential world leader on Twitter because of how much he's retweeted (10,000 retweets for every tweet.) He also has followers in nine different languages.