JAPAN: A Japanese railway company is turning to cameras as a way to spot drunken behaviour and keep late-boozing patrons from tumbling onto the tracks, a spokesman said.

His head bowed and hands clasped in front of him, Pope Francis stood today for two minutes of silent prayer facing east inside one of Istanbul’s most important mosques, as he shifted gears toward more religious affairs on the second leg of his three-day visit to mainly Muslim Turkey.

John Cornwell

THE brisk sales of copies of Time magazine, with Pope Francis on the cover as Person of the Year, is yet another indicator of the growing popularity of the pontiff from Argentina. Yet none of this can disguise the fact the Church over which he presides is, in the words of Hans Kung, “gravely ill”.

The Vatican publicly unveiled a handful of bone fragments purportedly belonging to St Peter, reviving the scientific debate and tantalising mystery over whether the relics found in a shoe box truly belong to the first pope.

Pope Francis’s apt choice of symbols has nods to tradition as well as his Argentinian roots, writes Daniela Petroff

Pope Francis is a footie fan.

AN UNREFORMED and unreforming papacy will serve only to extend and exacerbate the crisis that has blighted the Catholic Church since the second half of the pontificate of Pope Paul VI, who died in 1978.

THE recent disclosure during the trial of Pope Benedict XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, that he stole highly sensitive documents the pontiff had marked “to be destroyed”, raises the intriguing question: What else is missing from the papal archives?

The Pope has arrived in Lebanon to urge peace at a time of great turmoil in the Middle East.

The Irish Bishops Conference in 1996 lay out the procedures for handling allegations and suspicions of clerical child sex abuse in a document entitled “Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response.”

A lavishly-jewelled cross and a ring once owned by Pope Paul VI are heading to auction on eBay.

The head of a US Catholic order that specialised in the treatment of paedophile priests visited Pope Paul VI nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending their removal from ministry, it has emerged.

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen and his party certainly did not distinguish themselves with the cabinet reshuffle during the week, but the contortions of Leo Varadkar helped to take some of the spotlight off the Government.

Pope Benedict XVI has changed the rules for electing popes, making it potentially harder to name a successor but ensuring that when the white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel the new pope has broad support among cardinals.

German-born Pope Benedict XVI held his first meeting with an international Jewish group today, assuring them he will continue his predecessors’ efforts to improve relations between Catholics and Jews.

Pope Benedict XVI thanked journalists today for their coverage during the “historical” events of the papal transition.

CATHOLICS were not encouraged to read the bible in this country, apparently because the hierarchy could not trust them to interpret it properly. It was symptomatic of a rather cavalier attitude towards education.

THE first message a new Pope sends to the world is encoded in the name he chooses.

WAITING hours for a brief goodbye, pilgrims young and old prayed, sang hymns and shaded themselves from the sun with umbrellas as they queued yesterday to see Pope John Paul’s crimson-robed body at St Peter’s Basilica.

ROCK Hudson died in October 1985. His death convulsed the world not because a handsome if minor star had passed away, but because of how he died.

By TP O’Mahony WHEN the cardinals of the Catholic Church gather in conclave to elect the next Pope, what will they use as their papal template?

Pope John Paul II, in one of his strongest appeals yet against war, today implored Saddam Hussein to avoid giving the West reason to attack and warned the United Nations Security Council that military intervention could trigger an explosion of extremism.