JERUSALEM (AP) — An ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister visited Tuesday a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site for the first time since taking office in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new far-right government last week.
ROME (AP) — Flying back to Rome from Beirut in September 2012, I was escorted down the aisle to the first-class section of the papal plane and seated beside Pope Benedict XVI.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 's body, his head resting on a pair of crimson pillows, lay in state in St. Peter's Basilica on Monday as tens of thousands queued to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s longtime personal secretary has written a tell-all book that his publisher on Monday promised would tell the truth about the “blatant calumnies,” “dark maneuvers,” mysteries and scandals that sullied the reputation of a pontiff best known for his historic resignation.
RAPA NUI, Chile (AP) — Rapa Nui – the remote Chilean territory in the mid-Pacific widely known as Easter Island – is home to a Catholic church featuring artwork that reflects that islanders’ ancestral culture as well as Christian beliefs.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s last words were “Lord, I love you,” his longtime secretary said Sunday, quoting a nurse who helped care for the 95-year-old former pontiff in his final hours.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — There was no tolling of the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica, no solemn announcement by a Vatican monsignor to the faithful in the square. A fisherman’s ring did not get smashed and the diplomatic corps were not mobilized to send official delegations to Rome.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is rightly credited with having been one of the 20th century’s most prolific Catholic theologians, a teacher-pope who preached the faith via volumes of books, sermons and speeches.
BERLIN (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI leaves his homeland with a complicated legacy: pride in a German pontiff but a church deeply divided over the need for reforms in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal in which his own actions of decades ago were faulted.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Veteran reporter Giovanna Chirri was starting to doze off in the Vatican press room on a slow holiday when all of a sudden the Latin she learned in high school made her perk up — and gave her the scoop of a lifetime.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the first pope in 600 years to resign, has died. Here are highlights from his life.
April 16, 1927: Born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Marktl am Inn, Germany, youngest of three children to Joseph and Maria Ratzinger.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had a long and illustrious career as one of the Roman Catholic Church’s pre-eminent theologians. For all his accomplishments and accolades, however, Benedict will forever be known as the first pope in 600 years to resign.
The latest on the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:
OTTAWA — The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has remembered Pope Benedict XVI for his work in dealing with abuse by members of the clergy and for reaching out to Indigenous people affected by residential schools.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Hours after the death Saturday of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Pope Francis praised his “noble” predecessor and expressed gratitude for his life of faith and prayers, especially those offered in the nearly 10 years since the shy churchman dramatically became the first pontiff in centuries to retire from the papacy.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the shy German theologian who tried to reawaken Christianity in a secularized Europe but will forever be remembered as the first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job, died Saturday.
ROME (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was in stable condition Friday after suffering a decline in his health and participated in a private Mass in his room, the Vatican said, as the faithful in Rome honored “this last stretch of his pilgrimage.”
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a $121 million reorganization plan for one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is lucid, alert and stable but his condition remains serious, the Vatican said Thursday, a day after it revealed that the 95-year-old's health had deteriorated recently.
MARKTL AM INN, Germany (AP) — People in Pope Benedict XVI’s Bavarian homeland prayed Thursday for the retired pontiff, a favorite son of the region even 40 years after he left Germany for the Vatican and nearly a decade after his resignation stunned the world.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — Jerry Lamb could not maneuver his wheelchair into the rows of pews at his church. It wouldn’t fit. Nor could he sit in the aisles without awkwardly blocking the way.
PHOENIX (AP) — A polygamous leader accused of taking more than 20 wives, including underage girls, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to kidnapping and tampering with evidence charges stemming from a federal investigation into his community on the Utah-Arizona border.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 's health has worsened over the past hours due to advanced age and doctors are constantly monitoring his condition, the Vatican said Wednesday, as Pope Francis appealed to the faithful to pray for his “very ill” predecessor “until the end.”
The head of the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee says he’s going to introduce a bill in the upcoming legislative session to close an exemption to the state's child abuse and neglect reporting laws for members of the clergy.
ROME (AP) — The Vatican has detailed rituals and procedures to follow when a pope dies, but it has not published such rules for a pope emeritus. As a result, official word Wednesday that the health of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had worsened prompted questions about what happens if and when he dies.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Cara Berg Raunick watched with bafflement as Indiana's Republican legislators took less than two weeks to debate and pass an abortion ban that the governor signed quickly into law.
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — After fleeing violence in their Guatemalan town, but with their way to relatives in California blocked by continuing U.S. asylum restrictions, a family of 15 joined an Advent candlelight ceremony organized by their shelter just south of the border.
LONDON (AP) — King Charles III evoked memories Sunday of his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, as he broadcast his first Christmas message as monarch in a speech that also paid tribute to the “selfless dedication” of Britain’s public service workers, many of whom are in a fight with the government over pay.
BOBRYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainians usually celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, as do the Russians. But not this year, or at least not all of them.
Some Orthodox Ukrainians have decided to observe Christmas on Dec.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis used his Christmas message Sunday to lament the "icy winds of war” buffeting humanity and to make an impassioned plea for an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine, a 10-month-old conflict he decried as “senseless.”
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — The biblical town of Bethlehem marked a merry Christmas on Saturday, with thousands of visitors descending upon the traditional birthplace of Jesus as it rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Recalling Jesus’ birth in a stable, Pope Francis rebuked those “ravenous” for wealth and power at the expense of the vulnerable, including children, in a Christmas Eve homily decrying war, poverty and greedy consumerism.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Josh Shapiro will be taking office as Pennsylvania's next governor in January after running a campaign in which he spoke early and often about his Jewish religious heritage.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus’ Orthodox Church on Saturday elected Paphos Bishop Georgios as its new leader following the death last month of Archbishop Chrysostomos II.
The 73-year-old cleric received nine votes from the 16-member Holy Synod, the church’s highest decision making body, against four for runner-up Limassol Bishop Athanasios.
BEIJING (AP) — China has sanctioned two U.S. citizens in retaliation for action taken by Washington over human rights abuses in Tibet, the government said Friday, amid an ongoing standoff between the sides over Beijing's treatment of religious and ethnic minorities.
ROME (AP) — The pope’s vicar for Rome called Friday for the full truth to come out about a famous Jesuit priest accused of sexual and spiritual abuses against adult women, and said he was evaluating what to do with the priest’s Rome-based community and diocesan positions.
DBAYEH, Lebanon (AP) — Tucked away in the hills north of Beirut below a Maronite monastery, Lebanon’s only remaining Christian-majority Palestinian camp gives few outward clues to its identity. Unlike the country’s other Palestinian refugee camps, there are no flags or political slogans on display in Dbayeh camp.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Slovenia’s Catholic bishops on Thursday condemned as “despicable” the emotional, sexual, and spiritual violence committed against women by a famous Slovenian priest at the heart of an abuse and cover-up scandal roiling the Vatican and the Jesuit order of Pope Francis.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis warned Vatican bureaucrats on Thursday to beware the devil that lurks among them, saying it is an “elegant demon” that works in people who have a rigid, holier-than-thou way of living the Catholic faith.
Twenty years after city prosecutors convened a grand jury to investigate the handling of priest-abuse complaints within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the tortuous legal case came to an end with a cleric's misdemeanor no contest plea in a near-empty City Hall courtroom.
BERLIN (AP) — Holocaust survivors from around the globe are marking the third day of Hanukkah together with a virtual ceremony as Jews worldwide worry about a sharp increase in antisemitism in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere.
ROME (AP) — Opposition lawmakers in Italy are seeking a parliamentary commission of inquiry into three cold cases that have consumed the Italian public's imagination for decades, including the 1983 disappearance of a 15-year-old that was highlighted in the Netflix documentary, “Vatican Girl.”