Nicole Winfield

Clergy sexual abuse survivors on Oct. 2 unveiled a proposed new church law calling for the permanent removal of abusive priests and superiors who covered for them, as they stepped up their outrage over Pope Francis' choice to head the Vatican office that investigates sex crimes.

A few years ago, Pope Francis told the head of the main Vatican-backed Catholic women's organization to be "brave" in pushing for change for women in the Catholic Church.

Five conservative cardinals from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas have challenged Pope Francis to affirm current Catholic teaching on homosexuality and women's ordination ahead of a big Vatican meeting where such hot-button issues are up for debate.

Women who say they were abused by a once-prominent Jesuit artist said Sept. 19 they had been revictimized by his superiors, saying Pope Francis' recent gestures and an apparent effort to exonerate him publicly showed church pledges of "zero tolerance" were just a "publicity stunt."

Newly discovered correspondence suggests that World War II-era Pope Pius XII had detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6,000 Jews and Poles were being gassed each day in German-occupied Poland. The documentation undercuts the Holy See’s argument that it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities to denounce them.

Russia’s new ambassador to the Vatican met Sept. 18 with Pope Francis for a protocol visit, as signs emerged that the Vatican's Ukraine peace envoy could soon be undertaking a second mission to Moscow.

Pope Francis’ Ukraine peace envoy discussed the need to resume Ukraine grain exports to feed the world's hungry during a meeting Sept. 14 with a Chinese official while on a mission to Beijing, the Vatican said.

Researchers have discovered new documentation that substantiates reports that Catholic convents and monasteries in Rome sheltered Jews during World War II, providing names of at least 3,200 Jews whose identities have been corroborated by the city's Jewish community, officials said Sept. 7.

Ukraine’s Greek Catholic bishops told Pope Francis on Sept. 6 that his words praising Russia’s imperial past had pained the Ukrainian people, bringing complaints about the Vatican’s diplomatic neutrality in Moscow's war on their country to the heart of the Holy See.

The Vatican on August 29 sought to tamp down an uproar that erupted after Pope Francis praised Russia’s imperialist past during a video conference with Russian Catholic youths, insisting that he never intended to encourage modern-day Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Pope Francis challenged young people on Thursday to make the world a more just and inclusive place, as he focused the second day of his Portugal trip on inspiring students to use their privilege to combat global warming and economic inequalities.

The Vatican prosecutor asked a court July 26  to convict 10 people, including a cardinal, of a range of financial crimes, sentence them to three to 13 years in prison and order the confiscation of some 415 million euros ($460 million) to pay the Holy See back for bad investments and financial losses over the past decade.

The Jesuits said that a famous artist priest is definitively expelled from the religious order for sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women, and lamented they couldn't prosecute him more vigorously under the Vatican's internal procedures.

The Vatican prosecutor insisted July 18 that his indictments of 10 people, including a cardinal, for alleged financial crimes held up under two years of testimony, criticism and defense motions, as he began closing arguments in a trial that exposed the unseemly financial underbelly of the Holy See.

The young cardinal in charge of Mongolia’s tiny Catholic community said July 17 that Pope Francis' upcoming visit to a country with just 1,450 Catholics is evidence of his willingness to travel to the farthest corners of the globe to minister to even a handful of the faithful.

Pope Francis’ peace envoy was traveling to Washington on July 17 as part of the Holy See's peace initiatives for Ukraine, hoping to support humanitarian operations especially concerning children, the Vatican said July 17.

Pope Francis gave in July 15 to China’s unilateral appointment of a new bishop in Shanghai, formally recognizing Beijing’s installation of Bishop Shen Bin three months after the fact.

 Italy’s Parliament is poised to open a bicameral commission of inquiry into the disappearance of the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee, the third new investigation launched in the four decades since Emanuela Orlandi vanished on the streets of Rome.

Exactly 40 years after the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee disappeared, the Vatican said June 22 that new leads "worthy of further investigation" had surfaced hopes of finally getting to the bottom of one of the Holy See’s enduring mysteries.

The head of a religious art and culture center founded by a disgraced Jesuit priest came to his defense June 17 after he was expelled from the Jesuit religious order following allegations of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse against adult women.