Cardinal Joseph Zen of China has issued another strong critique of the rumoured Vatican-China deal on the appointment of bishops, calling it an act of 'suicide' and a 'shameless surrender' to the communist government.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is backing a call by Pope Francis for a day of prayer and fasting tomorrow for the people of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Pope Francis wept in response to a question sent to him by a person in care asking why his mother had abandoned him as a child, the Vatican has revealed.
Pope Francis renewed a commission on clergy sexual abuse on Saturday, confirming a US cardinal as its head, as the Vatican promised to give victims a greater say in its work.
The late Pope Paul VI, who led the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s and 1970s during one of its most turbulent modern periods and enshrined its opposition to contraception, will be made a saint this year, Pope Francis has decided.
Pope Francis regularly meets with victims of sexual abuse, the Vatican has confirmed, after a record was released of a conversation the pope had with Jesuits in Peru in which he revealed he holds the meetings with survivors on Fridays.
The former pope Benedict XVI has said that he is 'on a pilgrimage Home' in a letter to an Italian newspaper in which he said this was the 'final period of my life'.