The Pope

VATICAN CITY (AP) – The public can now visit the tomb of Pope Benedict XVI in the grottoes under St. Peter´s Basilica.

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI ‘s body is lying in state in St. Peter’s Basilica as thousands of people lined up hours before dawn on Monday to pay their respects.

COP26 has begun in Glasgow, Scotland, as it will surely go on for the next fortnight: in chaos and disaster. Just like the infamous COP15 in 2009 in Copenhagen, which preached ‘global warming’ but was blanketed in snow, COP26 is a perfect storm of stupid.

Sports fans were surprised, Sunday, when Pope Francis tweeted out his support of the New Orleans Saints — entirely by accident.

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump slammed the Wall Street Journal, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and the Pope —who questioned Trump’s faith — during his campaign rally on Thursday morning in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. “That poll was so different than

The world is losing interest in “global warming” a survey has found on the eve of the UN’s COP21 climate talks in Paris. Most people in most of the 20 countries surveyed say they don’t want their leaders to set

Vatican Radio has released the tape of a phone call that Pope Francis made to refugees sheltered in Kurdistan to express his closeness to them on Christmas night.

In his meeting with staff of the Vatican offices Monday, Pope Francis compared priests to airplanes, noting that they only make news when they fall, and yet “there are so many still flying.” “Many criticize priests,” the Pope continued, “and

In his meeting with members of the Italian National Olympic Committee Friday, Pope Francis compared athletics to the spiritual life, saying that the Church’s role is to urge people toward “a strong sense of spiritual combativeness.” Francis went on to

The White House has credited Pope Francis with being an important catalyst to the diplomatic thaw between Cuba and the United States. On Wednesday, President Obama instructed the Secretary of State to immediately initiate discussions with Cuba on the normalization

The world’s smallest nation wants to host the biggest athletic event. The pope has endorsed Rome’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and wants Vatican City to host a small number of events. Speculation of just what sports the

Pope Francis has identified what he called “the sins of the media,” narrowing them down to three: “disinformation, slander, and defamation.” Of these, he said, “the most insidious is disinformation,” which he compared to telling half-truths. “Of these three sins–disinformation,

The new motto for the New York Times could well be “All the news that’s fit to fabricate,” for as much fact-checking as the paper is doing when it comes to the Catholic Church. Its Thursday issue featured a front-page

“No one has ever heard of a sad saint or a saint with a funeral face,” Pope Francis said Sunday. “Unheard of! It would be a contradiction. A Christian is a person who has a heart full of peace because

With great rhetorical flourish, on Friday, Pope Francis spoke of Jesus as “the great discarded one” and the “liberator” who frees us “from all our slaveries and miseries,” while Mary’s canticle of Magnificat “proclaims a God who delights in overturning

Pope Francis has given four legged friends across the world an early Christmas present by saying that “Paradise is open to all God’s creatures”. In his weekly audience in The Vatican, His Holiness quoted the apostle Paul who told a

The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will name a batch of new cardinals in February, a year after his last set of appointments to the select group that counsels the pope and eventually gathers to elect his successor. Last

In a message to the UN Climate Change Conference winding down in Lima, Pope Francis said that “there is a clear, definitive and urgent ethical imperative to act” to combat climate change. “The consequences of environmental change,” Francis said, “which

A new report by the Pew Research Center shows Pope Francis enjoying broad popularity throughout the world, with a median approval rating of 60 percent across 43 nations surveyed. The report was released Thursday and offers a global view of

The archbishop of Lyon, France, and a congregation of French Christians visited the Kurdish city of Erbil, Iraq, on Sunday to recreate the famed Lyonnaise Festival of Lights–the feast of the Immaculate Conception–for thousands of Iraqi Christian refugees fleeing the

Pope Francis spoke Wednesday about the recent Vatican Synod on marriage and the family, in an effort to correct the false impression that some may have had of what was really going on and to calm fears that things were

Pope Francis has written a preparatory letter for the 8th World Meeting of Families, which he plans to attend in Philadelphia next September, saying that he “looks forward with confidence and hope to this blessed event.” This will be the

Pope Francis has sent a recorded video message to Christian refugees in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, France, delivered personally on Sunday. The Pope told the refugees that he would

In an extensive interview Sunday, Pope Francis said that much of the unrest generated by the recent Vatican marriage summit came from people only reading “some news in a newspaper, or an article,” rather than reading what the synod actually

Pope Francis has flatly denied that same-sex marriage was an issue at the recent Vatican marriage summit.  “Nobody mentioned homosexual marriage at the synod,” the Pope said in an interview Sunday. “It did not cross our minds.” The Pope suggested

In an interview Sunday, Pope Francis weighed in on a recent Pew Research Center study documenting the shift of many Latin Americans away from the Catholic Church and toward Pentecostal Protestant churches. The study showed that despite the “Francis Factor,”

The White House this week issued a statement explaining why it does not view the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. It was in response to an online petitionwhich attracted more than 213,000 signatures in support of designating the Egyptian-based group. The statement

“Continue along the path of voluntary and disinterested commitment,” Pope Francis encouraged international Christian service groups on Thursday. “There is so much need for a witness of the value of giving freely.” But, he warned, “the poor cannot become an

Addressing tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, Pope Francis recounting his recent trip to Turkey, summing up his meeting with state officials with the words: “We spoke of violence.” Francis said that on the first

In their meeting this weekend, Pope Francis told Turkish President Erdogan that what is needed now is a worldwide condemnation of Islamic terrorism “from the Muslims themselves.” They need to distance themselves from ISIS and say: “That is not who

“Ten of millions of persons” presently suffer from “physical, economic, sexual and psychological exploitation,” Pope Francis said Tuesday. He declared that this “modern slavery–in the form of trafficking in persons, forced labor, prostitution, and organ trafficking–is a crime ‘against humanity.’”

In a recent interview, Pope Francis’ right-hand man for the reform of the Roman curia said we can expect serious downsizing of the offices that make up the Vatican bureaucracy. Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, the Honduran coordinator of the

Ever since Pope Francis said “Who am I to judge?” when asked about the possibility that some gay clerics may be working in the Vatican, many have assumed that Francis was effecting a major sea change in Vatican politics and

A migrant from Algeria who threatened to set fire to his two daughters and ex girlfriend has been allowed to stay in the UK, because of his “right to a family life”. The man, who cannot be named for legal

Pope Francis urged Muslim leaders worldwide to “clearly” condemn terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, and called for an end to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. Francis said he had told Turkish President Recep Tayyip

In Istanbul Sunday morning, Pope Francis employed some of his strongest language against Islamic extremism to date, condemning jihadist violence against the weak and defenseless as “a profoundly grave sin against God.” Francis spoke of the “plea” coming from the