Vatican City

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Sunday criticized Iraq’s crackdown on anti-government protests, which have led to the deaths of more than 400 people since they erupted in Baghdad and other cities in October.

“I am following the situation in Iraq with concern. It is with pain that I have learned of the protest demonstrations of the past days that were met with a harsh response, causing tens of victims,” Francis said at his weekly Sunday blessing and message.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis takes his mission to ban nuclear weapons this week to the only places where they were used in war, visiting the World War Two ground zeros of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of a tour of Japan and Thailand.

The seven-day trip, one of his longest and most distant, gives Francis an opportunity to support and encourage the tiny but well respected Catholic communities, which make up less than 1% of the population in each country.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed on Thursday on the need to protect the rights of Christian minorities in the Middle East during a meeting at the Vatican, the U.S. State Department said.

Pompeo, whose trip this week to Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Greece has been overshadowed by an impeachment inquiry at home targeting President Donald Trump, met the pope for about a half an hour.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — At first glance, the handwritten postcards and letters look innocuous, even warm, sometimes signed off by “Uncle T.” or “Your uncle, Father Ted.”

But taken in context, the correspondence penned by disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the young men he is accused of sexually abusing or harassing is a window into the way a predator grooms his prey, according to two abuse prevention experts who reviewed it for The Associated Press.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The mystery of the 1983 disappearance of the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee took yet another twist Saturday following excavations this week at a Vatican City cemetery. The Vatican said it had discovered two sets of bones under a stone slab that will be formally opened next week.

The new discovery came after Vatican on Thursday pried open the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses in the cemetery of the Pontifical Teutonic College in hopes of finding the remains of Emanuela Orlandi.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — An Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis is now on trial at the Vatican, accused of sexually abusing seminarians.

Francis revealed the development in an interview with Mexico’s Televisa Tuesday. He said he received the results of a preliminary investigation into Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta two weeks ago and ordered the case be handed over for trial by a Vatican tribunal.

Zanchetta resigned suddenly as bishop of Oran, Argentina in 2017 and within a few months, Francis named him to a senior Vatican administration position.

20 Apr 2019; DW: Pope Francis slammed the "hardened hearts" of anti-immigration politicians and highlighted the plight of abused children at the start of the Catholic Church's most holy weekend of Easter.  

The pope leads an Easter vigil service on Saturday night ahead of the traditional Easter Sunday message to the world.