THE Minister for Children, Barry Andrews, had the audacity to assume that role in government while refusing to publish the report into child abuse in the Cloyne diocese which he had in his possession for several months.

Pope Benedict XVI departs today on his first pilgrimage to Latin America – a test of the 80-year-old pontiff’s stamina and how he intends to deal with pressing challenges to his church in the region.

Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin today rejected claims Pope Benedict XVI led a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic priests.

Pope Benedict XVI, making sentimental stops in his predecessor’s homeland, brought joy to Poles by announcing that he hopes John Paul II will be made a saint “in the near future".

PEOPLE of a conservative persuasion within the Catholic Church are interpreting the election of the new Pope as a vindication of the belief in the immorality of contraception, divorce, women priests, abortion, homosexuality, etc, and are arguing that those who do not accept these teachings have to either change their minds and get with the picture, or leave the Church altogether.

CONTRARY to Patrick Geaney’s letter (Irish Examiner, April 27), neither the document Crimen Sollicitationis of 1962 nor Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter of May 2001 give any permit to Catholic bishops to conceal criminal acts of child abuse from the civil authorities.

In the short time since his election as Pope Benedict XVI, there have been strong expressions of opinion about the new Pontiff from an unusually wide range of people.

THE crowds still gathered at the Vatican yesterday, trying to soak in the afterglow of Tuesday evening’s happenings.

WITH the appointment of the new Pope, will the Catholic Church stop teaching discrimination and bigotry?

David Marks

STUDENTS at the seminary where Joseph Ratzinger studied for the priesthood as a teenager in the 1940s erupted in cheers yesterday at the news that their townsman had become the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

CONSERVATIVE Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has gained strong support among Catholic cardinals seeking a successor to Pope John Paul II but many of them are still undecided, a Church official said yesterday.

PRESIDENTS, prime ministers and kings joined pilgrims and prelates in St Peter’s Square yesterday to bid an emotional farewell to Pope John Paul II at a funeral service that drew millions to Rome for the largest gathering of the powerful and the humble in modern times.

SOME Vatican insiders say that when cardinals come to elect a successor to Pope John Paul II they may prefer to return to a safe Italian candidate, like the vast majority of past pontiffs.

WITH the health of Pope John Paul II rapidly deteriorating, Church officials are bracing themselves for the dramatic changes that will come at the Vatican with the Pontiff’s death.

POPE John Paul is "in a bad way," one of his closest advisers was quoted as saying in an interview yesterday that was a rare break with Vatican ranks.