Pope Leo XIV is visiting one of Equatorial Guinea's notorious prisons Wednesday, drawing attention to human rights abuses that campaigners have denounced for years and especially after the U.S. began deporting third-country migrants here.

Leo's visit to the prison in Bata, the central African country's port city, continues the tradition of Pope Francis, who made prison visits a priority of his pontificate. Francis' aim was to give prisoners hope and to remind them the church was with them, while also shining a spotlight on judicial abuses, overcrowding and other injustices.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, on Monday expressed “profound indignation and unreserved condemnation” of the defacing of a statue of Jesus Christ by an Israeli soldier in Lebanon, saying the act “constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith.”

Pope Leo XIV is following in the footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine, making a pilgrimage to the archaeological ruins of eastern Algeria where the fifth-century titan of early Christianity lived, died and wrote some of the most important works in Western thought.

Leo's visit to Annaba, the modern-day Hippo, is a spiritual homecoming for the American pope on his second full day in Algeria. He arrived Monday on the first-ever papal visit, against the backdrop of the war in Iran and his calls for peace that have sparked a feud with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Pope Leo XIV on Monday began a landmark visit to Algeria in the first trip to the Muslim-majority country by a pontiff.

Pope Leo XIV on Monday said he had "no intention to debate" with Donald Trump, after the U.S. president criticized him over his comments on the U.S.-Iran war.

Pope Leo said Tuesday threats to inflict widespread damage on civilian targets in Iran were "unacceptable" and could breach international law .

Lebanese Christians marked Easter Sunday by turning their prayers to the south, where villages remain trapped by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

In the usually lively alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City, silence reigned on Easter Sunday, with the holiday overshadowed by war and restrictions on access to the Holy Sepulcher, where the faithful commemorate Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

UNESCO convened Wednesday an extraordinary meeting to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage in Lebanon, following the country’s request.

The meeting - an extraordinary session of the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict – led to granting provisional enhanced protection to 39 cultural properties as well as the provision of an international financial assistance, totaling over 100,000 USD for emergency operations on the ground.

As Christians packed churches across Lebanon this Palm Sunday to commemorate their belief in Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the renewed war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah weighed on parishioners.

Still, it was standing-room-only at a Maronite Catholic church near Dahieh, in Beirut's southern suburbs, a once-densely populated Shiite district — now emptied by sweeping Israeli evacuation orders and constant airstrikes. In the coastal city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, which has been almost cut off from the rest of the country by Israel bombing surrounding bridges, the peal of church bells and velvety choral music filled the air.