The president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro is working to set up a meeting with Pope Francis in hopes of restarting talks with the Venezuelan opposition. Maduro is reportedly hoping to meet with the Pope at the Vatican, along with representatives from his opposition.
An Argentine teacher and runner who has competed three times in the annual Falklands marathon met last week Pope Francis, in Rome, and handed him a little piece of the Falklands and some of the berries that the Argentine soldiers had to eat during their time in the 1982 conflict.
Situation very ugly politically, socially and economically. With no food or medicines, it is undeniable that the country is facing a very difficult situation and is very much militarized .
The relation between the Catholic church and the administration of president Mauricio Macri is a mature relation and links are as they should be, and this is based on autonomy and cooperation which is good for both sides, according to Monsignor Jose Maria Arancedo, head of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, CEA.
Pope Francis called for people to pray to the Aparecida Virgin to protect all of Brazil and all of the Brazilian people in this very sad moment, in reference to the removal of Dilma Rousseff as president and her replacement by vice-president and interim president Michel Temer, which occurred last week.
The Vatican announced Wednesday that, although Pope Francis is pleased about a peace deal between the government of Colombia and the country’s guerrillas, he has declined a request to have a Vatican envoy help select judges for a new peace tribunal.
Pope Francis said he has no problems with Argentine president Mauricio Macri, whom he described as a well born, noble person, revealing that in the past, as mayor and archbishop of Buenos Aires, they had differences but always addressed them in private and positively.
There is no animosity, said Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra after meeting with Pope Francis in Rome on the sidelines of an event sponsored by the United Nations, just days after the pontiff publicly rejected a multi-million-peso “donation” from the administration of President Mauricio Macri destined for the pope’s Scholas Occurrentes program.
Francis has met the grand imam of Cairo's al-Azhar mosque after a five-year pause in dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the mosque, the highest authority of Sunni Islam. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb visited the Vatican en route to a Paris conference involving Muslims and Catholics.
The Vatican said it is investigating two former officials over claims money meant for a children’s hospital was used to refurbish a cardinal’s luxury apartment. Costly work at former Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s flat, (seeming to clash with Pope Francis’s recommendations that church officials live as modestly as he), caused a scandal when allegations emerged that the Bambino Gesu Hospital foundation had helped foot the bill.