Pope Francis, in an annual ceremony held to remember the hundreds of innocent people murdered by the Italian mafia, made a solemn plea for mobsters to change or else end up in hell. The mafia continues to plague much of southern Italy: just on Monday, a four-year-old boy was shot dead, along with his mother and her boyfriend, near the southern city of Taranto in a suspected mob hit.
Pope Francis met on Wednesday with a group of Malvinas veterans and next of kin of fallen in the Malvinas war, two weeks before the 32nd anniversary of the Argentine military invasion of the conflict.
President Cristina Fernández (with a sprained ankle in a boot) and Pope Francis shared on Monday a lunch which lasted two hours and a half at Santa Marta residence in the Vatican. It's the third time the Argentine head of state and Francis meet since he was elected pontiff one year ago.
Reaffirming his austere and simple style – no mass celebrations have been scheduled in the Vatican to mark the first anniversary of his papacy – Francis chose a social network to address Catholics and renew his “Pray for me” message.
United States House Speaker John Boehner invited Pope Francis to address a joint session of Congress - an unprecedented event - during an expected visit to the United States next year. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have quickly sought to invoke the popular pontiff's devotion to the poor.
Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman has revealed that the European Union has requested direct talks with Argentina, after a meeting held between President Cristina Fernández and European Commission vice-president Antonio Tajani on the sides of the official inauguration of Michelle Bachelet as Chilean president.
Pope Francis named top laymen from the worlds of finance and economics to a new Vatican Council for the Economy, intended to improve scrutiny of the Holy See's scandal-plagued accounts.The creation of the 15-member council is a major step in bringing lay people into the Vatican, and reflects a drive by Francis to make changes to an establishment often seen as murky and secretive.
Pope Francis has taken his boldest step yet to overhaul the Vatican's scandal-plagued finances, creating a new department with broad powers to oversee all of its economic and administrative affairs, the Vatican announced on Monday. The Secretariat for the Economy will answer directly to the pope and will be headed by Australian Cardinal George Pell, currently the archbishop of Sydney.
Pope Francis received Friday in a private audience Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who formally invited the Argentine pontiff to visit her country during the World Cup soccer championship, which begins June 12.
Pope Francis dismissed on Sunday reports that he had called for a meeting between representatives from President of Cristina Fernández government and members of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) and organized labor CGT union, with the supposed aim of discussing economic issues.