Pope Francis showed an interest on the Falklands/Malvinas question negotiations during a meeting on Wednesday at the Vatican with Daniel Filmus chairman of Issues relative to the Malvinas Islands secretariat, according to Argentine sources which gave the event a great coverage. The meeting was in the framework of Wednesdays open audience at St Peter's square, when an estimated 50.000 people attend the ceremony.
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.
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.
The Vatican was Thursday pushed for the first time to provide answers to the UN over its commitment to stamp out child sex abuse by priests. The landmark question-and-answer session before the UN's child rights watchdog in Geneva came as Pope Francis said Catholics should feel shame, in an apparent reference to the scandals that have rocked the Church.
Pope Francis, whom conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church have accused of not speaking out forcefully enough against abortion, has called the practice horrific. The pope made his toughest remarks to date on abortion in his yearly address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican, a speech known as his State of the World address.
Pope Francis put his first stamp on the group at the top of the Roman Catholic hierarchy naming 19 new cardinals from around the world. Sixteen of them are cardinal electors under 80 and thus eligible to enter a conclave to elect a pope. They come from Italy, Germany, Britain, Nicaragua, Canada, Ivory Coast, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Chile, Burkina Faso, the Philippines and Haiti.
Pope Francis has baptized 32 babies in the Sistine Chapel and told their mothers to have no qualms about feeding them there. Two of the infants are the daughter of a couple that did not get married in the Catholic Church and a single mother's son.
Pope Francis drew more than 6.6 million people to his audiences, Masses and other events in Vatican City during his first year in office, figures show. The statistics cover the period from the Argentine's election in March to the end of 2013, the Vatican said.