Tag: Vatican

• Wednesday, January 15th 2020 - 09:16 UTC

  Benedict trying to distance himself from a controversial book with passages on celibacy

  

  Retired former pope Benedict XVI sought to calm a dispute within the Vatican on Tuesday, claiming his name was erroneously attributed as co-author to a new book with a conservative cardinal.

• Thursday, January 9th 2020 - 09:30 UTC

  Pope Francis kisses nun, as long “as you stay calm and don't bite”

  

  Pope Francis, who last month angrily slapped the hand of a woman who yanked him towards her, gave a light-hearted reaction more typical of his papacy on Wednesday when a nun asked him for a kiss. He said yes, although only after she promised not to bite him.

• Thursday, January 2nd 2020 - 08:30 UTC

  Pope apologizes for slapping a woman who had grabbed him, “we lose patience many times”

  

  Pope Francis apologized on Wednesday for slapping a woman who had grabbed him as he greeted a crowd of devotees, shortly before he delivered a speech denouncing ”every form of violence against women.

• Saturday, December 28th 2019 - 09:32 UTC

  Defrocked US cardinal paid for silence from Vatican officials, Washington Post reports

  

  A US cardinal gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to powerful Catholic clerics including two popes while facing accusations of sexual harassment, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

• Thursday, December 26th 2019 - 12:00 UTC

  Francis urges the world to let the light of Christmas pierce the “darkness in human hearts”

  

  Pope Francis urged the world to let the light of Christmas pierce the “darkness in human hearts” that leads to religious persecution, social injustice, armed conflicts and fear of migrants.

• Wednesday, October 23rd 2019 - 09:48 UTC

  Conservative Catholics disrupt Vatican Amazon synod and dump in the Tiber “pagan” idols

  

  The Vatican on Tuesday accused ultra-conservative Catholic social media of fomenting hate, a day after militants stole statues they considered pagan idols from a church and dumped them in the Tiber river.

• Wednesday, October 16th 2019 - 18:10 UTC

  Brazil following closely the Vatican does Synod fear bad international press

  

  A Brazilian diplomat said last week that the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro doesn’t fear the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon taking place this month at the Vatican, but that the Catholic bishops “involuntarily reinforce the campaign of the European lobbies, who are very afraid of the competition of Brazilian agriculture.”

• Tuesday, October 15th 2019 - 08:42 UTC

  Vatican's latest financial scandal claims its first victim: Pope Francis' chief bodyguard resigns

  

  The Vatican's latest leaks scandal claimed its first victim on Monday, as Pope Francis' chief bodyguard resigned over the leak of a Vatican police flyer identifying five employees who were suspended as part of a financial investigation.

• Saturday, October 12th 2019 - 09:40 UTC

  Vatican considering giving laywomen in the Amazon official ministries

  

  Deep in the Amazon forest, young couples looking to wed or baptize children often turn to Sister Alba, who fills in where Catholic priests cannot be found. But in many remote areas, there are not even enough nuns to go around, and it is laywomen who play a key role in the evangelization of indigenous people.

• Saturday, October 12th 2019 - 09:40 UTC

  Evangelical churches advancing in Argentina, even in Francis former archdiocese

  

  The pastor's voice bellows through an old converted cinema in a rundown Buenos Aires barrio and hundreds of hands reach out in prayer. Though not a typical place of worship, Evangelical churches like this one are sprouting up all over Pope Francis' former archdiocese, as once staunchly Catholic Argentina battles an economic crisis that has plunged more than one-third of the nation into poverty.