Vatican City

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Easter offers a message of hope in people’s “darkest hour,” Pope Francis said, as he celebrated a late-night vigil Mass Saturday in St. Peter’s Basilica, with the public barred because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pontiff in his homily likened the fears of current times to those experienced by Jesus’ followers the day after his crucifixion.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, speaking just a few hours after Australia’s highest court acquitted Cardinal George Pell of sexually assaulting two choirboys, on Tuesday offered his morning Mass for those who suffer from unjust sentences.

The court quashed convictions that Pell sexually assaulted the two teenagers in the 1990s and allowed the 78-year-old former Vatican economy minister to walk free from jail, ending the most high profile case of alleged historical sex abuse to rock the Roman Catholic Church.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Sunday backed a call by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire so the world can focus on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking at his weekly blessing, Francis appealed to everyone to “stop every form of bellicose hostility and to favor the creation of corridors for humanitarian help, diplomatic efforts and attention to those who find themselves in situations of great vulnerability”.

Guterres made the appeal on Monday.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Sunday he will this week deliver an extraordinary “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing - normally given only at Christmas and Easter - and called for worldwide prayer to respond to the coronavirus crisis.

Francis made the surprise announcement in his weekly Angelus message, which he has been delivering from inside the Vatican over the internet and television instead of before crowds in St. Peter’s Square.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis indicated on Wednesday he would not be visiting Iraq this year as he had hoped to do.

His improvised comments to a group of visiting Iraqis during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square were his clearest yet that the potentially dangerous trip had been indefinitely postponed.

“To you citizens of Iraq, I say I am very close to you. You are (in) a battleground. You suffer war, from one side and the other,” he said. “I pray for you and I pray for your country, where a visit by me had been programmed for this year.”

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis called on Sunday for respect of humanitarian law in Syria’s Idlib province, amid an escalation of a Syrian government offensive that has displaced more than half a million in two months.

He told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s square that the reports from Idlib were “painful ... particularly regarding the conditions of women and children, of people forced to flee from a military escalation.”

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, in his first message of the new year, denounced on Wednesday the use and abuse of women in modern society, and called for an end to the exploitation of the female body.

Speaking in a packed St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope also defended women’s rights to migrate in search of a better future for their children and condemned those who only thought about economic growth rather than the well-being of others.

“All violence inflicted on women is a desecration of God,” the pope said in his homily.

26 Dec 2019; MEMO: Pope Francis on Wednesday decried the international migrant crisis in his traditional Christmas address,  Anadolu reports.

“It is injustice that makes them cross deserts and seas that become cemeteries,” said the pontiff in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) Christmas Day message, addressing crowds from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis offered a Christmas message of hope Wednesday against darkness that cloaks conflicts and relationships in large parts of the world from the Middle East to the Americas to Africa.

The pope told tens of thousands of tourists, pilgrims and Romans gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the annual Christmas Day message that “the light of Christ is greater″ than the darkness “in human hearts” and ’’in economic, geopolitical and ecological conflicts.″

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis warned Saturday that “rigidity” in living out the Christian faith is creating a “minefield” of hatred and misunderstanding in a world where Christianity is increasingly irrelevant.

Francis called for Vatican bureaucrats to instead embrace change during his annual Christmas greetings to the cardinals, bishops and priests who work in the Holy See.