I don’t know about this Pope at all. I really don’t. He doesn’t fit in the pattern of popes I grew up with, writes Terry Prone

Pope Francis has opened his visit to the United States with a call for action to combat climate change.

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.

The Irish answer to the issue of same-sex marriage underscores Pope Francis’s isolation from the Western world and its people, writes John Lloyd.

A faith group has challenged Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin’s reliance on the Pope as a guide on how to vote in the marriage equality referendum.

Pope Francis said he believes his pontificate will be short and that he would be ready to resign like his predecessor rather than ruling for life.

When the approval of the violence involved in slapping a child is publicly endorsed by a Pope, while addressing a weekly audience at the Vatican, then it seems that the Pope is endorsing such behaviour with the imprimatur of the Petrine Office.

Pope Francis has urged bishops and religious superiors to cooperate with his sex abuse commission.

The Emmys are eagerly awaited — and not just for the gongs. The stakes are even higher when it comes to style, says Paula Burns.

Maybe it’s being truthful or being tactful, maybe it’s constant closeness or lots of space, but whatever the secrets to staying together are, Ireland’s longest-married couples are being invited to add their top tips.

The Archbishop of Dublin has described the newly canonised popes John XXIII and John Paul II as men “who in their day to day ordinary lives try heroically to live the Christian life”.

Catholicism has two new saints — Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II — and, almost uniquely, a great number of people will remember their pontificates.

Caroline Flack hosts Viral Tap, on ITV2 at 10pm. A brand new topical comedy show which searches for the week's best online clips and viral videos.

Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI were incompetent theologians even though they had doctoral degrees in theology.

There's something inexplicably adorable about Michael D Higgins queuing up to get some cash from the hole in the wall…

Popes John XXIII and John Paul II will be declared saints at a ceremony on Apr 27 that might see two living popes honouring two dead ones.

Pope Francis smiles during a news conference aboard the papal flight from Brazil to Rome yesterday.

Pope Francis has said he will not judge priests for their sexual orientation. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” he asked.

Pope Francis has travelled to Castel Gandolfo to have lunch with his predecessor Benedict XVI in an historic meeting.

Jonathan deBurca Butler explores whether an Irish saint and Nostradamus really did predict the current pope

Pope Francis has been praised for his warm relations with other faiths, ahead of today’s papal installation ceremony.

He was supposed to be ‘God’s Rottweiler.’ AN Wilson looks at the paradox of Benedict XVI, a man who seemed more complicated than many of us wanted to imagine when he appeared.

Pope Benedict is to resign his office at the end of this month after declaring he was too old to carry on as head of the Catholic Church.

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?

POLITICIANS are geared to think only as far as the next election. They go into liquidation if they lose their seat.

ORDAINED singer Sinéad O’Connor believes the Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, should be expelled from the country because of what she calls the contempt displayed by the Vatican to the Murphy Commission on clerical child abuse.

It’s all happening – again – at the Vatican what with murdered scientists, kidnapped potential Popes, a threatened terrorist attack, a deadly new world-destroying weapon, the return of a long-supposed defunct sinister organisation and every other kind of menace you want to throw in.

It was a scene that moved a nation: mourners clinging to one another and sobbing over neat rows of more than 200 coffins, some with tiny children’s caskets resting on top.

I WOULD like to remind people of the Popes’s publicly stated view of homosexuality being “intrinsically immoral” and “objectively disordered” — much harsher, in my view, than young Paisley’s recent utterance on the subject.

Pope Benedict XVI urged tens of thousands of young Catholics packing a football stadium to resist the temptations of wealth, power and other “snares of evil,” and told them to promote life from “its beginning to natural end.”

Pope Benedict XVI praised the the Second World War-era Pope, Pius XII, as a great pontiff but stopped short of endorsing his case for beatification, according to a transcript released today by the Vatican.

Pope Benedict XVI today said he would pray by the tombs of past Popes in the grottoes beneath St. Peter’s Basilica on All Souls’ Day, and would give a special thought to the “beloved” Pope John Paul II.

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.

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.

POPE BENEDICT XVI held the first general audience of his pontificate yesterday, pledging to work for reconciliation and peace.

COMMENTING on Pope Benedict’s election in the Irish Examiner last Thursday, I remarked that “the uncertainty now felt by some may yet give way to hope, respect and, in due course, love”.

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.

GERMAN Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the strict defender of Catholic orthodoxy for the past 23 years, took the name Benedict XVI.

Hundreds of thousands of special stamps issued to mark the period between Pope John Paul II’s death and the election of his successor have sold out, the Vatican post office said today.

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

THEY’VE plotted and deceived, they’ve been warlike, corrupt and power-hungry and they’ve sired children they shamelessly promoted: the history of popes, as cardinals mull who will succeed John Paul II, is decidedly murky.

CLUTCHING rosaries, medals and flowers, thousands of people filed past the simple white marble tomb of Pope John Paul II yesterday as the Vatican reopened the grottoes beneath St Peter’s Basilica for the first time since the Pope died.

WHEN there is nothing left to say, some fool will always say it. That was a message that used to hang in the newsroom of RTÉ.

THE souvenir sellers were busy enough as the cameras snapped the famous sights in Rome and the normal number of tourists for this time of year wandered around.