Pope Francis told European anti-money laundering experts that the Vatican was committed to “clean finance,” as he denounced financial speculation amid a spiraling corruption investigation in the heart of the Holy See.
The Catholic Church in the British Overseas Territories of the southern Atlantic Ocean is governed by two ecclesiastical jurisdictions: the Apostolic Prefecture of the Falkland Islands and the Ecclesial Mission sui iuris of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Both of these are directly responsible to the Holy See.
Pope Francis has sent a letter to Nicolas Maduro responding to a recent invitation to mediate in the Venezuelan political crisis, according to an Italian newspaper. Milan daily newspaper Corriere Della Sera published a report saying that previous peace efforts in Venezuela were “interrupted because what had been agreed in the meetings was not followed by concrete gestures to implement the agreements.”
The Vatican's retired ambassador to the United States accused senior Vatican officials of knowing as early as 2000 that the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, regularly invited seminarians into his bed but was made a cardinal regardless.
Pope Francis on Monday morning “humbly” asked six clerical sex abuse victims for forgiveness for the “grave crimes of clerical sex abuse” committed against them. The Pope made his comment to the victims in a homily delivered at mass in the Domus Santa Marta, his Vatican residence.
A UN committee on torture grilled on Monday the Vatican on the Catholic Church's child sexual abuse crisis, urging a permanent investigation system to end a climate of impunity prevailing for decades.
The Venezuelan government formally invited today the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to join the exploratory talks with the opposition as “mediator of good will” in order to find a solution to the violent situation in the country.
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.