INSIDER
President Joe Biden will travel to Italy next month to meet with Pope Francis and top Italian officials for what is expected to be the final international trip of his presidency.
Survivors of clergy sexual abuse are urging the Vatican to adopt the same zero-tolerance policy that it approved for the U.S. Catholic Church in 2002.
Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute genocide.
Several U.S. Catholic bishops on Wednesday encouraged the church to boldly share Vatican teachings on a range of hot-button issues, including the condemnation of abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy and gender-affirming surgery.
The Vatican tribunal says it convicted a cardinal of aggravated fraud and other charges because of his “objectively inexplicable behavior” in paying a self-styled intelligence analyst more than a half-million euros (dollars) in Vatican money.
Pope Francis’ child protection board has issued its first-ever global assessment of the Catholic Church's efforts to address the clergy sex abuse crisis.
With Pope Francis a few weeks away from his 88th birthday, the plotting for his successor is well underway at the Vatican.
Peruvian theologian the Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of the social justice-centered liberation theology that the Vatican once criticized for its Marxist undercurrents, has died.
The estimated crowd of 600,000 people Pope Francis' Mass in East Timor is nearly half of the small Southeast Asian country's population.
Pope Francis has indirectly acknowledged the abuse scandal in East Timor involving its bishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winning independence hero.
Pope Francis is wrapping up his visit to Indonesia after celebrating Mass before an overflow crowd of 100,000.
The president of East Timor sees Pope Francis’ upcoming visit as a prime opportunity to promote Asia’s youngest country on the world stage, not a time to confront the legacy of abuse by influential members of the clergy in the deeply Catholic nation.
When Pope Francis makes his trip to Asia's youngest country, East Timor, it will make him the second pope to visit after John Paul in 1989, and the first since the country gained independence from Indonesia in 2002.
When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church’s credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia’s newest country.
The Vatican is insisting at the close of a trial in London that it was the victim of a years-long fraud over its investment in a London property.
The pope's top adviser on fighting sex abuse is urging Vatican offices to stop displaying artwork by an ex-Jesuit artist.
Vatican police have detained a former employee after he allegedly tried to sell a 17th century manuscript back to the Holy See.
Authorities are expanding their investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans to include church leaders suspected of shielding predatory priests and failing to report crimes to law enforcement.
Tech giant Cisco Systems has joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically.
A pair of nude feet — dirty, wounded and vulnerable — are painted on the façade of the Venice women’s prison chapel.
The Holy See has formally protested to France after a court there ruled that a former high-ranking Vatican official was liable for what the court determined to be the wrongful dismissal of a nun from a religious order.
Transgender Catholics are voicing disappointment with a new Vatican document rejecting the fundamental concept of changing one’s biological sex.
The Vatican says Pope Francis has skipped the traditional Good Friday procession at Rome’s Colosseum to protect his health, adding to concerns about his frail condition during a particularly busy liturgical period.
Pope Francis has defrocked a notorious Belgian bishop who admitted 14 years ago that he sexually abused his nephew but faced no Vatican punishment.
Ukrainian and allied officials have criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.
One of the first women who accused a once-exalted Jesuit artist of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse has gone public.
A leading Catholic charity is making an urgent appeal to the U.S. state of Alabama to halt a planned execution this week using nitrogen gas.
Pope Francis says if he can, he'll keep a promise to visit his native Argentina in the second half of this year.
The Vatican says Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez and 18 Catholic clergy members from the Latin American country have arrived in Rome and are guests of the Holy See.
The Vatican has concluded a lengthy investigation into allegations of misconduct by Archbishop John Nienstedt, the former leader of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.
The Vatican next year will publish a collection of never-before-seen homilies delivered by the late Pope Benedict XVI.
Some Catholic bishops say they will not follow the Vatican’s new direction on allowing blessings for same-sex couples.
Pope Francis has urged Vatican bureaucrats to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality.
President Joe Biden plans to skip the upcoming climate talks in Dubai (which he has attended twice before), an event that is expected to draw heads of state and diplomats from more than 200 nations and the Vatican.
The Vatican says Pope Francis is receiving antibiotics intravenously to treat a lung inflammation but that he doesn't have pneumonia.
Pope Francis has met separately with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinians living through the war and set off a firestorm by using words that Vatican diplomats usually avoid: “Terrorism” and according to the Palestinians “genocide.”.
The head of the Catholic church in China has begun a trip to Hong Kong at the invitation of the city’s pope-appointed Roman Catholic cardinal, marking the first official visit by a Beijing bishop in history.
In the United States, the national conference of Catholic bishops rejects the concept of gender transition, leaving many transgender Catholics feeling excluded.
A judge at Britain’s High Court has ruled that life support for a terminally ill 8-month-old baby should be withdrawn at a hospice or hospital.
An 8-month-old terminally ill British girl has been granted Italian citizenship after a court in Britain authorized the withdrawal of life-supporting invasive treatment.
Pope Francis’ big meeting on the future of the Catholic Church is heading into its final stretch.
Several Catholic priests have held a ceremony blessing same-sex couples outside Cologne cathedral in a protest against the city’s conservative archbishop Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
Newly discovered correspondence in the Vatican archives suggests that Pope Pius XII had detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6,000 Jews and Poles were being gassed each day in German-occupied Poland.
The Vatican has beatified a Polish family of nine including children who were all executed for having sheltered Jews during World War II.
Ukraine’s Greek Catholic bishops have brought their complaints about the Vatican's diplomatic neutrality in Russia's war on their country to the Holy See itself.
Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church.
Pope Francis has announced World Youth Day is returning to Asia for the first time in three decades.
An estimated 1.5 million young people filled a field in the Portuguese capital for Pope Francis’ World Youth Day vigil.
With tourism reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic levels across southern Europe this summer, iconic sacred sites struggle to find ways to accommodate both the faithful who come to pray and millions of increasingly secular visitors.
Pope Francis’ peace envoy will meet with President Joe Biden in Washington this week as part of the Holy See’s peace initiatives for Ukraine.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is offering to help try to gain the release of a Roman Catholic bishop imprisoned in Nicaragua.
Pope Francis has followed his doctors' advice and skipped his customary Sunday noon public blessing as he convalesces from abdominal surgery.
Pope Francis has made a quick trip to a hospital for tests and returned to the Vatican, two months after he was hospitalized with an acute case of bronchitis.
The Vatican says Pope Francis has tasked a leading Italian cardinal with a mission it hopes it can “ease tensions" in the Ukraine war and lead to path of peace.
Pope Francis says talks are underway to return artifacts in the Vatican Museum that were acquired from Indigenous peoples in Canada and has voiced a willingness to return other colonial-era objects in the Vatican’s collection on a case-by-case basis.
Responding to Indigenous demands, the Vatican has formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery” -- papal documents from the 15th century that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands.
Pope Francis has shown a “marked improvement” after being given intravenous antibiotics for a bronchitis infection and could be released from the hospital in the coming days, the Vatican and his doctors say.
Greece has welcomed the return of ancient artifacts from the Acropolis, furthering a campaign to press the British Museum to hand back a collection of sculptures taken from the ancient site in Athens more than 200 years ago.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego says it may declare bankruptcy in the coming months as it faces “staggering” legal costs in dealing with some 400 lawsuits alleging priests and others sexually abused children.
The attendance of both the former bishop of Hong Kong and an adviser to Taiwan’s leader at this week’s funeral for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI highlights the Vatican’s uneasy relationship with communist-ruled China.
Revelations that the Vatican let a famous Jesuit priest off the hook twice for abusing his authority over adult women has exposed two main weaknesses in the Holy See’s abuse policies.
The head of Pope Francis’ Jesuit religious order has admitted that a famous Jesuit priest had been convicted of one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church some two years before the Vatican decided to shelve another case against him for allegedly abusing other adult women under his spiritual care.
The Vatican has decided to launch a preliminary sex abuse investigation into French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, after he admitted to having behaved in a “reprehensible way” with a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.
Poland’s culture minister has rejected speculation that a rare book given to Pope Francis by French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week might have been looted from Poland during World War II.
A 90-year-old Catholic cardinal and five others are standing trial in Hong Kong for allegedly failing to register a now-defunct fund set up to assist people arrested in the mass anti-government protests three years ago.
Pope Francis says the Vatican is in contact with the Nicaraguan government about its crackdown on the Catholic Church and hoped that “at the very least” nuns from Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity religious order would be allowed to return to the country.
The Vatican says a preliminary church investigation into sexual assault allegations by a Canadian woman against a top cardinal has determined the case doesn’t warrant further investigation.
