Tag: Vatican

• Wednesday, March 13th 2019 - 09:40 UTC

  Ex Vatican treasurer sentenced to six years in jail for sexually abusing choir boys

  

  Former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to 6 years in jail on Wednesday by an Australian court for sexually abusing two choir boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. Pell, a former top adviser to Pope Francis, is the most senior Catholic worldwide to be convicted for child sex offences.

• Tuesday, March 5th 2019 - 09:32 UTC

  Pope Francis will open Vatican archives on Pius XII and the Holocaust

  

  Pope Francis has said the Roman Catholic Church will open up its archives on Pius XII, who was Pope during World War Two. Pius, who was Pope from 1939 to 1958, has been accused of tolerating the rise of Nazi Germany and of not doing enough to protect Jews during the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked behind the scenes to try to protect Jews.

• Tuesday, February 26th 2019 - 09:55 UTC

  Another blow for the Catholic Church: Cardinal Pell found guilty of sexually assaulting choirboys

  

  Australian Cardinal George Pell who helped elect popes and ran the Vatican's finances, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys, becoming the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of child sex crimes.

• Monday, February 25th 2019 - 09:05 UTC

  Pope ends sexual abuse conference calling for an “all out battle” but victims remain deeply disappointed

  

  Pope Francis has ended his conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”. But victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.

• Friday, February 22nd 2019 - 09:31 UTC

  “Hear the cry of the little ones who plead for justice,” Pope Francis tells Vatican summit fighting sex abuse

  

  Pope Francis on Thursday opened a landmark Vatican summit on fighting child sex abuse, calling for “concrete measures” and handing top Catholic bishops a roadmap to tackling paedophilia in the church.

• Thursday, February 21st 2019 - 09:31 UTC

  Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy demand to meet Pope Francis

  

  Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy demanded on Wednesday to meet Pope Francis to press their call for the Church to apply a zero-tolerance policy including the dismissal of bishops who covered up such offences.

• Wednesday, February 6th 2019 - 09:09 UTC

  Sexual abuse of nuns by clerics, including abortions, 'and still going', was admitted by Pope Francis

  

  Pope Francis has admitted that clerics have sexually abused nuns, and in one case they were kept as sex slaves. He said in that case his predecessor, Pope Benedict, was forced to shut down an entire congregation of nuns who were being abused by priests.

• Thursday, January 24th 2019 - 09:34 UTC

  Pope Francis arrives in Panama for the World Youth Day; immigration high in the agenda

  

  Pope Francis wasted no time wading in on the standoff over funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall on Wednesday as he started his trip to Panama, saying on the plane from Rome that hostility to immigrants was driven by irrational fear. In a brief conversation between the pope and journalists on the flight, one reporter described the barrier that juts out into the Pacific Ocean between the two countries in San Diego, California, as a “folly”.

• Wednesday, December 26th 2018 - 07:05 UTC

  Pope calls for peace and fraternity in his Urbi e Orbi address

  

  The Pope has used his annual Christmas message to appeal for peace in conflict zones including Yemen and Syria. The two countries have both been ravaged by civil war for years, pushing their people into humanitarian crises. Francis also called for political reconciliation in Nicaragua and Venezuela.

• Saturday, December 22nd 2018 - 06:03 UTC

  Pope Francis pledges that “never again” will the Church cover up clergy sex abuse

  

  Pope Francis has vowed that the Catholic Church will “never again” cover up clergy sex abuse and demanded that priests who have raped and molested children turn themselves in. Francis dedicated his annual Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy to abuse, evidence that a year of devastating revelations of sexual misconduct and cover-up has shaken his papacy and caused a crisis of confidence in the Catholic hierarchy.