Despite stating at the outset that he didn’t like travel and didn’t plan to do much of it, during the first six years of his pontificate Pope Francis made close to 30 international trips, including visiting virtually every country of Latin America. Yet there’s one glaring exception: his home country, Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay.
Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published a letter which blames clerical sex abuse on the “all-out sexual freedom” of the 1960s. He said that cultural and historical change had led to a “dissolution” of morality in Catholicism.
To kiss the ring on the pope’s hand or not to - that is the question. On Monday, when Pope Francis visited a Catholic shrine in Loreto, he repeatedly withdrew his right hand as a long line of people bowed and tried to kiss the ring on it.
Former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to 6 years in jail on Wednesday by an Australian court for sexually abusing two choir boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. Pell, a former top adviser to Pope Francis, is the most senior Catholic worldwide to be convicted for child sex offences.
Pope Francis has said the Roman Catholic Church will open up its archives on Pius XII, who was Pope during World War Two. Pius, who was Pope from 1939 to 1958, has been accused of tolerating the rise of Nazi Germany and of not doing enough to protect Jews during the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked behind the scenes to try to protect Jews.
Australian Cardinal George Pell who helped elect popes and ran the Vatican's finances, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys, becoming the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of child sex crimes.
Pope Francis has ended his conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”. But victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.
Pope Francis on Thursday opened a landmark Vatican summit on fighting child sex abuse, calling for “concrete measures” and handing top Catholic bishops a roadmap to tackling paedophilia in the church.
Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy demanded on Wednesday to meet Pope Francis to press their call for the Church to apply a zero-tolerance policy including the dismissal of bishops who covered up such offences.
Pope Francis has admitted that clerics have sexually abused nuns, and in one case they were kept as sex slaves. He said in that case his predecessor, Pope Benedict, was forced to shut down an entire congregation of nuns who were being abused by priests.