The Vatican should be much more aggressive in dealing with people suspected of financial crimes like money laundering and step up prosecutions and indictments, a European finance watchdog agency said on Tuesday.
Two new books by Italian journalists depict a Vatican plagued by mismanagement, greed, cronyism and corruption and where Pope Francis still faces stiff resistance from the old guard to his reform agenda.
A gathering of world Roman Catholic bishops was thrown into confusion on Monday with the leak of a letter from conservative cardinals to Pope Francis bitterly complaining that the meeting was stacked against them.
Palestine's flag will fly at United Nations headquarters after the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a Palestinian resolution, infuriating Israel with a move that Palestinians described as a step toward U.N. membership.
Israel complained to the United Nations on Tuesday about a Palestinian initiative to fly their flag alongside those of full member states at the world body's headquarters, calling it "another cynical misuse of the U.N. by the Palestinian Authority."
Pope Francis makes an urgent call for protection of the planet and repeats his view that global warming is mostly man-made in his keenly awaited encyclical, according to a draft published by an Italian magazine on Monday.
Pope Francis' hard-hitting criticisms of localization and inequality long ago set him out as a leader unafraid of mixing theology and politics. He is now flexing the Vatican's diplomatic muscles as well.
Pope Francis named two Palestinian women as saints on Sunday, in a ceremony in Saint Peter's Square just days after the Vatican formalized its de facto recognition of the State of Palestine.
The Vatican concluded its first treaty that formally recognises the State of Palestine, with an agreement on Catholic Church activities in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Holy See said on Wednesday.
Germany's Roman Catholic Church, an influential voice for reforms prompted by Pope Francis, has decided lay employees who divorce and remarry or form gay civil unions should no longer automatically lose their jobs.
The Vatican said on Sunday it had received a ransom demand for the return of two rare documents written by Renaissance master Michelangelo that were stolen from its archives nearly 20 years ago.
A remark by Pope Francis to the effect that he hoped his homeland Argentina could avoid "Mexicanization" was not intended to offend Mexicans or to undervalue the government's efforts to fight drug trafficking, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
Pope Francis returns to Asia for the second time in less than six months, traveling to Sri Lanka and the Philippines in coming days to underscore his concern for inter-religious dialogue, poverty and the environment.
The Vatican may try a man who scaled St. Peter's Basilica to protest against laws that he says lost him his business in Italy, a spokesman for the papal city state said on Friday.
The Vatican said on Friday it had arrested a member of women's rights group Femen who on Christmas Day bared her breasts and grabbed a statue of the baby Jesus from a nativity scene in front of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square.
President Barack Obama announced the United States would restore diplomatic relations it severed with Cuba more than 50 years ago, drawing resistance from lawmakers opposed to reconciling with the communist-run island.
The Vatican's top prosecutor has frozen 16 million euros in bank accounts owned by two former Vatican bank managers and a lawyer as part of an investigation into the sale of Vatican-owned real estate in the 2000s, according to the freezing order and other legal documents.
The end of communist rule in Europe, which began 25 years ago this month, was not all positive for Christianity because it brought tensions between Rome and Russia back to the surface, a senior Vatican official said on Monday.
A Vatican bioethics official on Tuesday condemned the death by assisted suicide of American Brittany Maynard, a terminally ill 29-year-old who ended her life over the weekend, as an undignified "absurdity".
