The Vatican's chief investigator has today insisted that Ireland's most senior cleric has no case to answer regarding renewed allegations of mishandling of allegations against the paedophile Brendan Smyth.

Hiding behind a culture of “omerta” — the Italian word for the Mafia’s code of silence — would be deadly for the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s top official for dealing with sexual abuse of minors by clergy has said.

THE VATICAN has issued a new document making it easier to discipline priests who abuse children, and also made the possession or distribution of child pornography a canonical crime for the first time.

The Vatican prosecutor of clerical sex abuse warned perpetrators that they would suffer damnation in hell that would be worse than the death penalty.

The Vatican today tried to defuse growing anger over remarks by the pope's top aide that the paedophile priest scandal was caused by homosexuality and not the church's celibacy rule.

The Vatican today denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of paedophile priests in his German homeland, and contended he had long confronted abuse cases with courage.

Pope John Paul II has approved changes in Vatican policy that will speed up the dismissal of some clergy accused of sex abuse and give lay people a greater role at the church trials of alleged molesters, a Vatican official has said.