Your letters, your views.

Simpler and faster, changes are most substantial to Catholic marriage annulment laws since 1700s

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a US bishop who pleaded guilty to failing to report a suspected priestly child abuser in the first known case of a pope sanctioning bishops for covering up for paedophiles.

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

When Pope Francis visits the Philippines next week, traffic enforcers will not let the capital’s streets get gridlocked if they have to answer the call of nature.

Pope Francis has called for an end to all forms of fundamentalism and said fighting hunger and poverty, rather than military intervention alone, were key to stopping Islamist militants carrying out "grave persecutions" in Syria and Iraq.

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

A German bishop under fire for heavy spending is in Rome for talks at the Vatican, placing his future in the hands of a Pope who has espoused a simple lifestyle.

...In addition to resolving the child abuse, corruption and banking scandals, will you shed infallibility and extend an olive branch to Christians in the east to unite the Church once more? asks AN Wilson

By abandoning much of the baroque pomp of his predecessor Benedict, the new pope has already won many admirers, write Philip Pullella and Catherine Hornby

Pope Francis has personally sent his best wishes to the people of Ireland and asked them for their prayers.

Pope Francis must end the scandal of Church secrets being leaked to newspapers, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said, underlining one of the challenges facing the new Roman Catholic leader.

Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernised Argentina’s conservative Catholic church.

Brian Murphy and Michael Warren profile the man formally known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio

The scandal-hit Catholic Church needs to undergo renewal and reform, the former leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales said today as he called for the “pope’s own house to be put in order” in the wake of recent troubles.

The Catholic Church in Britain was in turmoil today after its most senior cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who faces allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour, announced he is stepping down.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been formally questioned about clergy sex abuse in his former Archdiocese of Milwaukee, just days ahead of his departure for Rome and the conclave that will elect the next pope.

Please allow me to respond to Janet Maxwell, Church of Ireland Head of Communications (Letters, Jan 10). She wrote to you on the Protestant evangelical Bethany Home (that closed in 1972), in response to a column by Victoria White and a subsequent Examiner editorial.

Minutes before this man had been talking about the sanctity of each human life. Now he was dismissing the unmarked graves of the babies who died needlessly at Bethany and the stories of the home’s 25 survivors by saying it wasn’t “technically” a Church of Ireland home.

Pope Benedict rang in the new year with a Mass for about 10,000 people in St Peter’s Basilica yesterday, as the Church marked its World Day of Peace.

Pope Benedict XVI has wished Christmas peace to the world, decrying the slaughter of the “defenceless” in Syria and urging Israelis and Palestinians to find the courage to negotiate.

More than twice as many Catholics as Protestants have been appointed to the board of Sport Northern Ireland, it was claimed tonight.

Carlo Martini, who was buried yesterday, was for progressives in the Church a symbol of the fading dream of open reform, writes Tom Heneghan

The Priests will be headline performers at the climax of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress.

JUST after dawn on Wednesday, May 23, Paolo Gabriele said goodbye to his wife, passed by the bedrooms of his three children, and left to start another day in the service of the man Roman Catholics believe is the vicar of Christ on Earth.

On Mar 12 in the Examiner I read with great interest Fr Sean McDonagh’s comments in Dan Buckley’s article and also Very Rev Joseph McGuane’s comments in Letters.

The search continues for the heart of the patron saint of Dublin, stolen by thieves from a Church of Ireland cathedral on Saturday.

IRELAND plans to become the first European nation to sell sovereign sukuk — Islam-approved financial certificates — as its equal tax treatment for Islamic-finance products attracts investors.

AS a practising Roman Catholic and proud to be so, I am appalled at the bias in reporting by certain sections of the media in regard to our clergy.

WE expect a Dean of St Patrick’s to cause a stir, and the Very Rev Robert MacCarthy is no exception.

The discovery of government papers from the early years of the North's Troubles has sparked a court action by former prisoners held without trial under the controversial policy of internment.

I AM reliably informed that the reason the Government will not allow former residents of the Protestant evangelical Bethany Home to apply for redress is because the coffers are bare.

China's state-controlled Catholic Church says it will move swiftly to appoint new bishops in dioceses where there are none, in a step certain to worsen tensions with the Vatican.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has described a Real IRA rally in Derry as "unacceptable".

POPE Benedict led Roman Catholics into Holy Week celebrations, telling a Palm Sunday crowd that man will pay the price for his pride if he believes technology can give him the powers of God.

IT’S shocking to see the Catholic church’s true colours shining through.

An ice cream company banned from using an advert showing a pregnant nun has vowed to defy regulators by placing similar posters along the route of the Pope’s London visit.

GIVEN his stated position of “honesty and straight talk in the pursuit of ecumenism”, I find the manner in which Rev Canon Stephen Neill (Letters, July 20) denounces the Vatican’s recent document ‘Normae de Gravioribus Delictis’ rather bizarre.

THE publication of ‘Normae de Gravioribus Delictis’ by the Vatican has rightly caused consternation in the implied equivalence of women’s ordination, concelebrating the eucharist with Protestants and the crime of paedophilia.

A senior cardinal defended the Roman Catholic Church’s practice of frequently not reporting sexual abusive priests to the police, saying it would have been like testifying against a family member at trial.

A priest convicted of sexually abusing children while the pope was archbishop of his diocese has been suspended from his pastoral duties for breaking a promise not to work with youths again.

A PAY telephone line for French Roman Catholics to confess their sins drew criticism from bishops yesterday.