Tag: Vatican

• Tuesday, June 11th 2019 - 09:31 UTC

  Vatican joins gender identity debate: it can “annihilate the concept of nature and destabilize the family institution”

  

  The Vatican has released a new document challenging modern conceptions of gender identity. The 31-page teaching guidance, released on Monday, is titled Male and Female He Created Them. It speaks of an “educational crisis” and says the current debate can “annihilate the concept of nature” and destabilize the family institution.

• Tuesday, May 7th 2019 - 08:32 UTC

  Pope Francis tells Argentine bishops he desires to visit his homeland in the near future

  

  Despite stating at the outset that he didn’t like travel and didn’t plan to do much of it, during the first six years of his pontificate Pope Francis made close to 30 international trips, including visiting virtually every country of Latin America. Yet there’s one glaring exception: his home country, Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay.

• Saturday, April 20th 2019 - 09:35 UTC

  Vatican denounces widespread inequality in the world during the Good Friday service

  

  Pope Francis listened as a preacher denounced the widespread inequality in the world at a Good Friday service on the day Christians recall Jesus' death by crucifixion. During the “Passion of the Lord” service in St Peter's Basilica, songs in Latin recounted the last hours in Jesus' life, from his arrest to his burial.

• Friday, April 12th 2019 - 07:50 UTC

  Ex Pope Benedict blames clerical abuse on the “all out sexual freedom” of the sixties

  

  Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published a letter which blames clerical sex abuse on the “all-out sexual freedom” of the 1960s. He said that cultural and historical change had led to a “dissolution” of morality in Catholicism.

• Friday, March 29th 2019 - 08:52 UTC

  Pope rejecting hand kissing from worshippers: a “simple question of hygiene”

  

  Pope Francis has addressed the mystery of why he withdrew his hand from worshippers' kisses, explaining it was a “simple question of hygiene”. Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said the Pope was worried about germs when meeting Catholics last Wednesday.

• Wednesday, March 27th 2019 - 08:08 UTC

  Conservative Catholics blast the Pope because he dislikes people kneeling and ring kissing

  

  To kiss the ring on the pope’s hand or not to - that is the question. On Monday, when Pope Francis visited a Catholic shrine in Loreto, he repeatedly withdrew his right hand as a long line of people bowed and tried to kiss the ring on it.

• Tuesday, March 26th 2019 - 09:15 UTC

  Lopez Obrador urges Spain and the Vatican to apologize for abuses during the conquest; Madrid strongly rejects

  

  The Mexican president has sent a letter to Spain's King Felipe VI and Pope Francis urging them to apologize for human rights abuses committed during the conquest of the region. Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the indigenous peoples of Mexico had been the victims of massacres.

• 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.