Much about Ukraine and its strategic peninsula, Crimea, is in the news these days. George Mason University reported in 2005 that historian researchers in Russia have fingered the Vatican as the cause of the Crimean war in the 1850s.  In…

Recently the Australian Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the child abuse of the Catholic Church in Victoria released its report on the horrific saga. Monica Dux, an ex-Catholic wrote the following in the Sydney Morning Herald.   “…Any residual sympathy I…

The Victorian state government’s report on clergy child sex abuse recommends sweeping changes to laws which the Catholic Church used to shelter itself and accused church leaders of trivializing the problem as a ‘‘short-term embarrassment”. Inquiry Chairwoman Georgie Crozier introduced…

The Roman Catholic Church had “extensive knowledge dating back to the 1950s” of the sexual abuse of children by the pedophile priest Denis McAlinden which continued over four decades on children as young as four and five, an Australian investigation…

Keeping the pace of his predecessor Benedict XVI, Pope Francis has approved the sainthood of John Paul II merely eight years after his death. The lightning fast canonization of John Paul II, by Vatican standards was faster than any other…

Pope Francis met with the Enrico Letta, the new Prime Minister of the Italian Republic to discuss the social situation and jobs for youth in Italy. In a statement, the Vatican said the two men discussed the active contribution of…

The International Criminal Court rejected a request by SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), to investigate Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity over the priestly sex abuse scandal. SNAP is an abuse victims’ advocacy group based in the…

In Melbourne alone, 29 Catholic Priests are acknowledged as guilty of sexually abusing children. But the Archbishop of Melbourne told Victoria’s child abuse inquiry the church had paid compensation to victims of 59 priests who had worked in the archdiocese….

The Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, John J. Myers, is being criticized for mishandling a priest who “attended youth retreats and heard confessions of minors in defiance of a court-ordered lifetime ban on ministry to children.” Parishioners at St. Mary’s…

For the first time, a Roman Catholic Church official has been convicted in the United States of covering up sex-abuse claims against Roman Catholic priests. Monsignor William Lynn, 61, the former secretary for clergy at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, was…

The Catholic Church says people under pressure to work extra hours are stressing their families and that Sunday should be used as a day of rest and prayer. And they want governments and communities to support families financially so that…

Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, attended the papal installation Mass of Pope Francis I. No Greek Orthodox patriarch has attended a papal installation Mass for almost 1000 years, since 1054 when the split between east and west occurred….