An Irish Jesuit who went missing for eight days in Rome and was eventually located in hospital remains in intensive care but is showing some signs of improvement.

An Irish Jesuit who went missing for several days in Rome has been found in a hospital following searches involving police, family from Cork, and former president Mary McAleese.

DESIGNED as territories of spiritual and temporal control, Ireland’s diocesan structures date from the Synod of Kells in 1152. The bishop was a spiritual ‘capo’ and a lord who ruled.

A child abuse victim who received a written apology from the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart has described the Catholic Church’s investigation into the handling of child abuse at the order as “evidence of institutional criminality”.

A long-serving bishop has sparked a storm of controversy over his fitness for the job after revealing he once thought paedophilia was “friendship gone too far”.

A lay religious group will hold a silent vigil outside the residence of the papal nuncio in protest at the silencing of four liberal priests.

The Irish priest muzzled by the Vatican for his liberal views has received overwhelming support from colleagues worldwide, with a senior member of the Irish Redemptorist order saying liberal priests are being subjected to FBI-like attention from ultra-orthodox “Catholic agents”.

The founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, Fr Tony Flannery, is being investigated by the Vatican because of his liberal views.

A CORK-BASED priest was training under-age county teams and was a selector of the minor county football team, even though sex abuse allegations had been made against him years earlier.

The Catholic Church today denied that the Pope had suggested condoms could be used to avoid pregnancy.

THE Vatican next week will revise Church law on sexual abuse of children by priests, doubling its own statute of limitations and introducing penalties for child pornography, Catholic Church sources said yesterday.

POPE BENEDICT’S plans to send an “apostolic visitation” to Ireland shows he has failed to acknowledge the inability of secret Church procedures to address clerical sex abuse, a survivor has said.

The Pope has been criticised for his response to the Murphy Report into the cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

THE Pope’s failure to accept accountability for the role of the Catholic Church in recklessly endangering children makes him just as guilty as the Irish bishops who covered up child abuse, victims’ groups say.

The murder of an innocent schoolgirl almost four decades ago was tonight being investigated in the wake of two harrowing reports into the cover-up of clerical abuse.

POPE Benedict XVI had a “friendly” meeting with one of his fiercest critics — dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, the Vatican said yesterday.

POPE Benedict XVI put his predecessor John Paul II on the fast track for sainthood yesterday.

IT had all the hallmarks of a political campaign: the candidate was shaking hands in the adoring crowd, a television crew and security detail covering his every move.

Pope John Paul II has approved changes in Vatican policy that will speed up the dismissal of some clergy accused of sex abuse and give lay people a greater role at the church trials of alleged molesters, a Vatican official has said.