The Vatican is holding its biggest criminal trial in modern history. The case alleges 10 people, including a once-powerful cardinal, of defrauding the Holy See of tens of millions of dollars. AILSA CHANG, HOST: An unprecedented trial began in Italy today, specifically at the Vatican. One of the defendants is a cardinal. He and nine […]
Read MoreVATICAN CITY — Pope Francis told prelates Saturday to shun the “logic of human power,” pressing his campaign to root out corruption and other wrongdoing from the Vatican’s scandal-tainted power structures. The admonition came a day after the latest embarrassment for the Vatican hierarchy — the arrest by Italian authorities of a Vatican accountant, in […]
Read More(CNN)Billed as a reformer and outsider, Pope Francis was elected five years ago.He took the helm as the Catholic Church wrestled with corruption and the fallout of the child sexual abuse scandal. But this is hardly the first time that the church has been gripped by scandal.Can you imagine a Pope placing the rotting corpse of […]
Read MoreWhen news first broke on Tuesday that Italian prosecutors were investigating the Vatican Bank for violations of anti-money-laundering regulations, the story seemed to be that the bank had returned to its old ways. Reports in the press referenced the Vatican’s connection to a 1980s financial scandal in which Italy’s second largest bank, Banco Ambrosiano, went […]
Read MoreThe European Court of Human Rights found Vatican City is protected by state immunity from lawsuits brought in European courts by victims of clergy sexual abuse. (CN) — Vatican City cannot be sued in European courts because it is a sovereign state, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday, delivering a blow to […]
Read MoreA teen was accused of abuse inside Vatican City. Powerful church figures helped him become a priest.
VATICAN CITY — The warnings started coming eight years ago, sent to some of the most powerful figures in the Roman Catholic Church, alerting them to a potential sex abuse crime that stood out from other church cases. The profile of the alleged abuser, by itself, was unusual: not a priest, but rather a teenage […]
Read MoreCatholic groups on Tuesday accused Italy’s Church of an “institutional failure” to confront clergy sexual abuse, and demanded an independent national inquiry mirroring ones conducted in France and Germany. A collective of nine groups – seven headed by women – issued the demand during the launch of a campaign called “Beyond the Great Silence” and […]
Read MoreAt a trial under way in Sicily, a 28-year-old Italian is seeking justice against a man he accuses of forcing him to perform sex acts before going on to become a priest. The victim says the alleged abuse, committed more than a decade ago when he was a minor and the accused was a seminarian […]
Read MorePressure groups say there could be a million victims Italy is a “Pandora’s box” of hidden sex abuse by priests, a senior Vatican official has claimed as activists press for an inquiry into Italian clergy they suspect of assaulting up to a million victims. Father Hans Zollner, who is the Pope’s main expert on abuse, […]
Read MoreRome (AFP) – Victims of paedophile priests in Italy unveiled Tuesday a campaign dubbed “Beyond the Great Silence”, pushing for an independent investigation into clerical abuse carried out on the Vatican’s doorstep. Inquiries across the United States, Europe and Australia have exposed the scale of abuse within the Catholic Church — and a decades-long cover-up — […]
Read More