Clerical abuse victims have welcomed the decision by Pope Francis to abolish the Vatican’s strict secrecy rules covering sex abuse proceedings.

JONATHAN Pryce has not slept. He is fresh off a plane from New York, where he is appearing in a play on Broadway, and is due to fly back to perform again the following day.

The Religious Sisters of Charity says it is confident of a “positive outcome” on the legal transfer of its land shares for the building of the new National Maternity Hospital.

“Will it be a tale of goalkeepers?” George Hamilton intones portentously as the camera zooms in on Kasper Schmeichel. “Will it be a tale of goalscorers?”

The Association of Catholic Priests received many messages from people applauding the organisation for coming out strongly in support of Co Cavan priest Fr Oliver O'Reilly after it emerged that businessman Sean Quinn complained about him to the Vatican.

I refer to the criticism levelled at The Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Alphonsus Cullinan concerning the practice of yoga in Catholic schools. A Roman Catholic bishop is a successor of the apostles; he is indeed shepherd of his flock, and carries a staff as a visible symbol of this role. As bishop, he has a sacred duty of pastoral care.

Fianna Fáil's Stephen Donnelly is calling on the Health Minister to clarify the governance of the National Maternity Hospital.

The Vatican is investigating a Kenyan man’s claim that his father is an Italian missionary priest who impregnated his mother when she was 16 after he brought his case to the attention of an Irish-based organisation.

Killala diocese is typical of many Catholic dioceses in Ireland.

The most senior Catholic to be found guilty of sexually abusing children has lodged an appeal in Australia's highest court against his convictions for molesting two choirboys in a cathedral more than two decades ago.

We take a trip down memory lane and check out what happened on this day in years gone by by looking back at some Irish Examiner front pages and highlighting other events which went down in history across the world.

We take a trip down memory lane and check out what happened on this day in years gone by.

Hopes of finding the remains of a missing Vatican teenager in the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses have been dashed.

Cardinal John Henry Newman was the first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, with the institution later becoming UCD.

New guidance for Catholic schools issued by the Vatican rejecting the idea that people can self-declare their gender “ignores the real and legitimate experiences” of young trans people, according to Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI).

The Vatican has issued a document rejecting the idea that people can choose or change their genders.

It is an unfortunate fact that religious extremism, anti-religious extremism too, has been at the root of tremendous bloodshed.

Retired pope Benedict XVI has published an analysis on the Catholic Church's clergy sex abuse scandal, blaming it on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and church laws that protected priests.

The Vatican has for the first time opened its own investigation into the case of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican citizen who disappeared in the summer of 1983.

Father Fintan Gavin, 53, will become the fourth bishop to be appointed by the Vatican to join the Diocese of Cork and Ross, since it was formed in 1958.

Pope Francis has declined to accept the resignation of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin as archbishop of Lyon after he was convicted of failing to report a known predator priest to police, the Vatican said.

Philip Pullella Pope Francis, ending a landmark conference on sexual abuse of children by clergy, has called for an “all-out battle” against a crime he said should be “erased from the face of the Earth”.

Apart from achieving independence, joining the European Union, and almost unlimited access to education, nothing has changed this society as dramatically as the Catholic Church’s spectacular loss of power.

His stated intention to decentralise the Catholic Church’s power and reform its central bureaucracy, the Curia, has not endeared Francis to traditionalists, says TP O’Mahony

The three-monkeys principle — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil — was, in the areas of physical or sexual abuse, close enough to convention for many generations. Its application, however, was uneven.

The Vatican's women's magazine has denounced the sexual abuse of nuns by priests, and the resulting "scandal" of religious sisters having abortions or giving birth to children who are then not recognised by their fathers.

Pope Francis has said fear of migration is "making us crazy" as he began a trip to Central America amid a standoff over President Donald Trump's promised wall at the US-Mexico border and a new caravan of migrants heading north.

Irish survivors of abuse will join international academics and activists in Boston today for a major conference on transitional justice.

Widespread public shock followed the recent release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report that identified more than 1,000 child victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Pope Francis came and he went. In terms of the past sins visited on the Irish population by the Catholic Church, not a lot of difference was made.

The Tuam Home Survivors Network has savaged the appeal to the Pope by Children's Minister Katherine Zappone for funds for the Mother and Baby Home site, calling it "nothing more than a publicity stunt".

Here's all you need to know this morning.

“Magdalene laundries, mother and baby homes, industrial schools, illegal adoptions, and clerical child abuse are stains on our State, our society, and also the Catholic Church. Wounds are still open and there is much to be done to bring about justice and truth and healing for victims and survivors,” said Leo Varadkar.

Here is your morning bulletin...

A former top Vatican official has accused Pope Francis of having known of allegations of sex abuse by a prominent US cardinal for five years before accepting his resignation last month and he called on the pontiff to resign.

Pope Francis appeared to be unaware of the details of abuse suffered by many Irish victims at the hands of Catholic clerics, according to one of the survivors who met him in Dublin on Saturday.

Campaigner and abuse survivor Marie Collins has called on Pope Francis to face down the senior clerics in the Vatican who are resisting change in the Catholic Church’s response to perpetrators and their victims.

Things are far from perfect in Ireland when it comes to issues of child protection, but we have made a lot of strides in the right direction, writes Daniel McConnell.

Social change, recent referendum results and a changing social order mean the Ireland of today is very different from that seen by Pope John Paul II in 1979.

The US report on child sex abuse and cover-ups in Pennsylvania has led to calls to extend time limits for more victims to bring cases to court, writes Bette Browne.

Who is in charge of the Catholic Church? asks Alison O’Connor. 

Pope Francis will arrive in Dublin at 10.30am tomorrow.

Latest: Pope Francis has said he hopes the World Meeting of Families will bring "renewed encouragement to families everywhere".

The steady separation of church and State in recent years is good for both, the Agriculture Minister has said ahead of the Pope's visit to Ireland.