Time-honored rituals, drafted and refined over centuries, allow for ritual mourning and provide order at a dramatic moment of transition.

You can get in touch with Jesus by emailing [email protected] The chaplain of the Agostino Gemelli Hospital, where Pope Francis remains hospitalized, has called for faith and prayer, urging Catholics to embrace "hope against all hope" as concerns over the pontiff's health persist.

The pontiff's condition is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and pre-existing lung disease, according to doctors.

A scholar of global Catholicism writes how Francis has opened the church to the outside world in ways no pope had done before.