Pope Francis vowed Monday that no effort must be spared to root out priestly sex abuse and cover-up from the Catholic Church, but gave no indication that he would take action to sanction complicit bishops or end the Vatican culture of secrecy that has allowed the crisis to fester.
14 lives claimed the increase of violence in Nicaragua, which is about to break the the dialogue to resolve the crisis that left some 250 dead in almost three months of protests against President Daniel Ortega.
Catholic archbishop in Australia has been given a maximum sentence of 12 months in detention for concealing child sexual abuse in the 1970s. Philip Wilson, now archbishop of Adelaide, is the most senior Catholic globally to be convicted of the crime.
Nicaraguans were back on the streets in their thousands on Sunday to protest what they called a government breach of a two-day truce agreed during Church-mediated peace talks. Students at a university in northeastern Managua claim police attacked them during a demonstration outside the campus on Saturday night in which four students were shot and injured.
In an unprecedented move, all of Chile’s bishops offered to resign on Friday after attending a crisis meeting this week with Pope Francis about the cover-up of sexual abuse in the country.
Pope Francis sent an audio message for the 41st anniversary of the “Madres de Plaza de Mayo” (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo), who protested against the disappearance of their children during the Dirty War (1976-1983) of Argentina’s military dictatorship.
Venezuela's shortage of food and medicines reached the Catholic religious field when a donation of wafers from the Church of Colombia became necessary for the current Easter week.
In a letter addressed to Argentine women and men who expressed their closeness on the fifth anniversary of his pontificate March 13, Pope Francis said his love for Argentina continues to be “great and intense,” and also apologized for gestures he’s made that might have caused offense.
As Pope Francis marks the fifth year of his papacy next week, the pontiff once hailed as a fearless reformer is under fire for his handling of the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. Since taking over in March 2013, the 81-year-old Argentine has championed the cause of the marginalized, saying he wanted a “poor church for the poor” and shunning papal palaces and ostentatious displays of wealth.
A Vatican magazine has denounced how nuns are often treated like indentured servants by cardinals and bishops, for whom they cook and clean for next to no pay. The March edition of “Women Church World,” the monthly women’s magazine of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, hit newsstands Thursday. Its expose on the underpaid labor and unappreciated intellect of religious sisters confirmed that the magazine is increasingly becoming the imprint of the Catholic Church’s #MeToo movement.