An Australian bishop has said he turned a blind eye to decades of complaints against a predatory paedophile priest because “the whole area of sexual abuse is so distasteful that I would have found it unpalatable”. Retired Bishop Michael Malone of Maitland-Newcastle diocese told the New South Wales commission of inquiry he was out of Read more
Taking to heart Pope Francis’s call for austerity, a priest in Columbia has decided to sell the white Mercedes Benz E200 convertible his family gave him. Father Hernando Fajid Alvarez Yacub, chaplain of Saint Michael’s Cemetery in Santa Marta, was given the car a year ago as a gesture of gratitude for caring for his Read more
The new papal nuncio to Malaysia has landed in the midst of an intense row over whether Christians in the country should be allowed to use the word “Allah” to refer to God. Archbishop Joseph Marino, the first nuncio appointed to the Muslim-majority nation, said during a press conference that he supported the arguments in Read more
Pope Francis has give support and encouragement by letter to an Argentinean rock singer jailed for causing a fire that took the lives of 194 young people in a Buenos Aires nightclub in 2004. “You will have days when you feel down, but don’t be afraid. Be strong. Everything passes,” the Pope wrote to Patricio Read more
Pope Francis has revamped the Vatican criminal code, extending it to apply to employees of the Holy See anywhere in the world. The revised code includes provisions covering the theft and publication of confidential documents and money-laundering, and provides for the freezing of financial assets. It also strengthens provisions against child abuse, specifying that Vatican Read more
The Italian edition of the pop-culture magazine Vanity Fair has declared Pope Francis its Man of the Year — with the backing of openly gay English singer-songwriter Sir Elton John. The magazine features the Pope on the cover of its latest issue and says he has done enough in his first 100 days in office Read more
A United Nations body charged with child protection has posed a list of tough questions to the Holy See about child abuse by Catholic priests. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has for “detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, brothers, or nuns” as Read more
In the first pastoral trip of his pontificate, Pope Francis travelled to a refugee centre in southern Italy and issued a heartfelt appeal against the “globalisation of indifference” towards migrants. The Pope said he decided to visit Lampedusa, a small island with a population of 6000 and just 70 miles from Tunisia, after seeing newspaper Read more
Pope Francis has asked for a statue of himself at his old cathedral to be removed — and advised seminarians and novices to get around on bikes and avoid sleek cars and smartphones. The statue, a lifesize likeness of the Pope, had been installed for about 10 days in the gardens of the Buenos Aires Read more
Taking a leaf out of Pope Francis’s book, the new head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has rebuked priests who do not focus on the spiritual care of their people. In a pastoral letter from his patriarchal see in Baghdad, Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako warned that some priests “have turned their parishes in little Read more