A weary Pope Benedict XVI has celebrated his final public Mass as pontiff.

Pope Benedict has called on European leaders to spur economic growth by countering the wealth gaps between their countries with the same determination used to reduce the “spreads” among member state’s borrowing costs.

The Vatican’s best kept secrets have been divulged in a spate of leaks, the latest culminating in the trial of his butler Paolo Gabriele. Peter Popham examines the background to the personalities and controversies

Pope Benedict XVI’s onetime butler declared he was innocent of a charge of aggravated theft of the pope’s private letters, but acknowledged that he photocopied the papers and said he feels guilty that he betrayed the trust of the pontiff he loved like a father.

A Vatican scandal will get an unusually public airing next week when the butler who served the Pope’s meals and helped him dress goes on trial for leaking Benedict’s private papers in the hope of cleaning up what he saw as “evil and corruption everywhere in the Church”.

The Vatican’s second in command accused the media of trying “to imitate Dan Brown” in their coverage of the VatiLeaks scandal and said the Roman Catholic Church’s latest travails were part of the Devil’s attempt to destabilise it.

The Pope's butler was formally questioned today in the investigation into the leaks of the pontiff's papers, a scandal that represents one of the gravest security breaches in recent Vatican history.

Amid all the rivalries and gossip exposed by a growing Vatican crisis, Pope Benedict’s deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has emerged as the chief target of an unprecedented campaign of leaks.

The worst crisis in Pope Benedict’s pontificate deepened when Italian media said at least one cardinal was among those suspected of divulging sensitive documents as part of a power struggle at the top of the Church.

AN international clerical abuse survivors group is calling on Irish bishops to release secret files as it pursues the Vatican for crimes against humanity at the Hague.

Italy’s top bishop rounded on sex-scandal mired Premier Silvio Berlusconi today with scathing criticism, insisting public officials must control themselves and warning of the damage to the country and its reputation.

A BELGIAN Catholic Church-backed commission probing hundreds of reported cases of child abuse by priests announced its resignation en masse yesterday, after police raids on its offices that angered the Pope.

A SLOVENIAN student who was captured, tortured and killed by communists during World War II was beatified yesterday by Pope Benedict XVI’s state secretary at a Mass attended by thousands.

Pope Benedict XVI told cardinals today that he does not feel alone while at the helm of a “wounded and sinner” church, the Vatican newspaper reported.

I’M aghast at Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s blind assertion that homosexuality is linked to paedophilia (April 12).

GAY groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict’s number two for calling homosexuality a “pathology” and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children.

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, dragged deeper than ever into the clergy sex abuse scandal, is launching a legal defence that it hopes will shield the Pope from a US lawsuit seeking to have him answer questions under oath.

THE Pope will today conclude his historic two-day emergency meeting with Irish bishops in Rome, at which the fallout from the Murphy report into allegations of the rape and abuse of 320 children by 46 priests in the Dublin Archdiocese, is top of the agenda.

THE editor of a leading Italian Catholic newspaper which criticised Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi quit yesterday in a row that has seriously strained relations between the Vatican and the Italian government.

ITALIAN Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is launching legal actions against media in Italy and abroad, including Britain, France and Spain, for libel in their coverage of his private life, his lawyer has said.

Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi is planning to attend a religious service on the remission of sins alongside a top Vatican official.

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.

Grieving relatives today collapsed over flower-draped caskets of the victims of Italy’s worst earthquake in three decades as the nation joined in a day of mourning.

Pope Benedict XVI turned the spotlight on the plight of children who are abused, forced to live on the streets or serve as soldiers, at his Christmas Midnight Mass.

Pope Benedict XVI began a week-long Bible-reading marathon on Italian television – appropriately with “In the beginning”.

The pope today condemned the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as a “brutal terrorist attack” and prayed that further violence would be avoided following her death.

THE beatification of 498 Catholics killed during the Spanish Civil War was not politically motivated, the Vatican’s number two said yesterday.

Peru’s president today vowed to rebuild the quake-shattered city of Pisco as his government struggled to stem looting in the wake of the disaster.

US President George Bush, in his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, defended his humanitarian record around the globe, telling the papal leader today about US efforts to battle Aids in Africa.

Pope Benedict XVI plans to discuss the Iraq war and the plight of Christians in Iraq when he meets US President George Bush for the first time this week, the Vatican’s second in command said today.

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.

THE world needs the Northern Ireland peace process to work to show that Christians can co-exist together, Pope Benedict said yesterday.

The world needs the Northern Ireland peace process to work to show that Christians can co-exist together, Pope Benedict said today.

President Mary McAleese is to meet Pope Benedict today during her official visit to the Vatican in Rome.

Workers carried away the last charred bodies of victims from a fire that swept through a crowd of Nigerians stealing fuel from a ruptured oil pipeline, and the final death toll stood at 265, the Red Cross said today.

THE VATICAN secretary of state was just kidding when he said the Holy See might one day have a football team to rival the top formations in Italy’s powerful Serie A, a report said yesterday.

THE Vatican yesterday expressed deep concern over a possible new scandal set off by an African archbishop who announced he was championing the cause of married priests in the Roman Catholic Church.

IT GRIPPED millions who read it, causing uproar and profiteering, and now its creator has all but dismissed its factual core.

The death of Pope John Paul has boosted interest in The Da Vinci Code novelist Dan Brown, an author who has been attacked by a leading cardinal for offending the Catholic church.

As cardinals prepare to elect a new pope, one Catholic community in particular has much at stake – Opus Dei, the ultraconservative movement at the centre of the furore generated by The Da Vinci Code book.

Huge groups of pilgrims, students and clergy poured out of buses at St Peter’s Square today, joining queues that stretched miles through the surrounding streets to wait for a brief glimpse of Pope John Paul’s body.

Mourners streamed past the crimson-robed body of John Paul II for a second day today, with thousands waiting in line to say a personal farewell to the pontiff, as the cardinals who will elect his successor prepared for another round of preparatory meetings to arrange for the conclave.

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.