Everyone's favorite pope

Pope Francis arrived in the United States on Tuesday for his first visit -- a historic six-day trip to the spiritual home of capitalism after his tour of communist-ruled Cuba.

In the Catholic Church, Mass is always celebrated, never held or said. Francis, like other Catholic priests, delivers a homily, not a sermon. And a novitiate is a building or a program. A person entering the novitiate is a novice.

Pope Francis on Monday praised the sacrifices made by Cuba's Catholic Church to work on the island as he visited the home region of communist leaders Fidel and Raúl Castro.

HAVANA, Cuba – Pope Francis met Sunday with Fidel and Raúl Castro, the brothers who have ruled Cuba since its 1959 revolution, after celebrating an outdoor mass attended by hundreds of thousands.

HAVANA, Cuba – Pope Francis delivered mass Sunday before hundreds of thousands of people on Havana's iconic Revolution Square, calling Cubans to serve the downtrodden and warning them that "service is never ideological."

The regular bedlam of long ticket lines and spinning luggage machines at the Miami International Airport got an extra charge of emotion on the eve of Pope Francis's visit to Cuba, as hundreds of Cuban Americans prepared to make the hop across the Florida Straits on Friday.

When Pope Francis arrives in Havana on Saturday afternoon, he will find a diminished Catholic Church struggling to recover its place in Cuban life.

Before he lands in the United States on Sept. 22, Francis will arrive in Havana on Sept. 19 for a four-day, three-city tour of Cuba that will put a spotlight on his political and diplomatic skills as never before. His challenge: to accelerate the process of reconciliation between the United States and Cuba charted by John Paul II and push the Castro government to hasten and deepen the pace of change on the island.

Pope Francis said Tuesday that during a special "year of mercy" he's designated that all priests would have the right to hear confession for abortion. Is it a symbolic gesture?

The restless boy from Flores is today a restless pope. In the two years since he was named pontiff, Francis, 78, has brought a distinctive rebellious streak to the seat of Saint Peter. Papal observers predicted that he would shake up the Vatican hierarchy. Few expected him to dive into global politics with this much evangelical fervor.