VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the “precious gift of free speech and the press” in an audience with some of the 6,000 journalists who descended on Rome to cover his election as the first American pontiff.

Pope Leo XIV called for a kinder, gentler mass media, one that speaks up for those with no voice and in defense of free speech, and urged regimes around the world that jail journalists to set them free.