Six of tonight’s 10 finals at the National Elite Championships are likely to have an impact on Olympic ambitions ahead of the Rio 2016 Games.

Katie Taylor - minus her dad and coach in her corner for the first time this decade - claimed her first Irish title in the ring at Dublin’s National Stadium last night.

Pope Francis met privately yesterday with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Vatican, using the talks to call for a sincere effort aimed at bringing peace to Ukraine.

His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State at the Holy See declared that the outcome of the marriage referendum is ‘a defeat for humanity’ — after the votes were cast, as if he were administering a balming poultice.

Pope Francis says it is OK to smack your children to discipline them – as long as their dignity is maintained.

The Vatican’s economy minister has said hundreds of millions of euros were found “tucked away” in accounts of various Holy See departments without having appeared in the city-state’s balance sheets.

Shocked parishioners have said prayers at a church in England where their vicar is under arrest for murdering a baby.

The Vatican has put its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic under house arrest after opening a criminal child sex trial against him.

In an attempt to distance himself from his initial robust defence of the remarks of the Belfast Protestant evangelical minister Pastor James McConnell who described Muslims as heathen, satanic and spawned evil, Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson said he believed the pastor "has the right to freedom of speech" but that he "would never seek to cause any insult to any section of our community".

The Queen of England and the Duke of Edinburgh will meet Pope Francis at the Vatican today.

13 years on Fr Aidan Troy recalls the Holy Cross protests, writes Dan Buckley

Four Elite national boxing titles before his 21st birthday, where will it all end for Joe Ward?

The issue of divorce is stoking a spirited debate between Catholic cardinals and revealing the challenges and expectations for Pope Francis after his promises to put the Church more in touch with modern life.

Pope Francis has announced the first major overhaul of the Vatican’s outdated and scandal-plagued bureaucracy in a quarter-century, creating an economics secretariat to control all economic, administrative, personnel, and procurement functions of the Holy See.

Pope Francis has created a new Finance Ministry to oversee the Vatican's economic affairs.

A UN human rights committee denounced the Vatican for “systematically” adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on paedophiles and the bishops who concealed their crimes.

The Vatican “systematically” adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, a UN human rights committee said today.

Charlie Flanagan TD, chairman of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, said the closing of our embassy to the Holy See could be reviewed once we had an economic upturn.

The Government intends to open a ‘scaled-down’ diplomatic mission to the Holy See, which it closed ostensibly to ‘save money’.

The Vatican is gearing up for a bruising showdown over the global priest sex abuse scandal, forced for the first time to defend itself at length and in public against allegations it enabled the rape of thousands of children by protecting paedophile priests and its own reputation at the expense of victims.

Pope Francis today recruited a veteran Vatican diplomat to be his top aide, replacing the Holy See’s secretary of state who in recent years increasingly became a divisive figure in a church hierarchy mired in embarrassing scandal and financial probes.

A woman has been returned for trial in connection with the alleged multiple stabbing of another female.

The publication of the final chapter of the Mahon Report yesterday shines another light on the corrupt nature of how planning decisions were arrived at, writes Michael Clifford

Pope Francis has named a commission of inquiry to look into the activities of the troubled Vatican bank, amid a new money-laundering probe and continued questions about the secretive institution.

The Pope has set up an inquiry to look into the activities of the troubled Vatican bank amid a new money-laundering investigation and continued questions about the secretive institution.

Expenditure on Ireland’s embassies and diplomatic missions abroad fell by just 0.3% last year, despite the closure of three offices including the controversial decision to shut the embassy to The Vatican.

A 22-year-old woman has been questioned in connection with a frenzied knife attack on another in the grounds of an Ennis primary school.

Cardinals elected a new pope to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics tonight, overcoming deep divisions to select the 266th pope in a remarkably fast conclave.

Catholic cardinals have gathered at the Vatican for their final day of talks before the conclave to elect the next pope.

The last cardinal who will participate in the conclave to elect the next pope arrived in Rome today, meaning a date can now be set for the election.

The Catholic Church awoke Friday with no leader following the resignation of Benedict XVI, who pledged obedience to his successor.

The Pope is to become a Twitter user in six languages with the username of @Pontifex from next week.

The Pope's former butler will go on trial next week over the embarrassing theft of papal documents that exposed alleged corruption at the Holy See's highest levels.

Catholic bishops are drawing up radical new plans for parishes to hold Sunday services without priests.

The Vatican has blamed the media for fuelling the scandal over leaked documents and insisted there were no power struggles or problems of unity in the Holy See's governance.

Pope Benedict XVI has broken his silence over the leaked documents scandal that has convulsed the Vatican, saying he was saddened by the betrayal but grateful to those aides who work faithfully and in silence to help him do his job.

Coroners and medical technicians swarmed the crypt of a Roman basilica to exhume the body of a reputed mobster as part of an investigation into one of the Vatican’s enduring mysteries: the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee.

The Vatican has launched an internal, criminal investigation into the leaks of confidential documents which alleged corruption and financial mismanagement and exposed power struggles among Holy See officials, a Vatican prelate said today.

A senior civil servant appointed non-resident ambassador to the Vatican is to open talks with the Pope’s representatives on sharing an embassy building with other diplomats assigned to Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI was scandalised and dismayed by the abuse perpetrated by some members of the clergy and of religious congregations, his new envoy to Ireland said today.

GOD-hating, priest-baiting, loony leftie Eamon Gilmore secured a key plank of his evil secular masterplan to make us a nation of pagans by shutting down the Vatican embassy.

The government must reverse its short-sighted decision to withdraw Ireland’s resident ambassador to the Holy See.

The new Papal Nuncio has said that Pope Benedict XVI asked him to "solidify and strengthen" the relations between Ireland and the Holy See.

VACILLATION and the Vatican make for uncomfortable bed fellows.