Nicole Winfield

The Vatican rejected lay experts' determination that a half-dozen claims were credible and instead slapped the retired bishop on the wrist for what it called "flagrant" imprudent behavior.

The first comprehensive internal inquiry on sex abuse allegations by a religious order in Spain has identified 81 children and 37 adult victims by 96 Jesuits since the late 1920s.

The Vatican has never been a democracy, but the incongruity of a government that is a moral authority on the global stage and yet an absolute monarchy is becoming increasingly evident. 

Pope Francis has formally stripped the Vatican secretariat of state of its financial assets and real estate holdings following its bungled management of hundreds of millions of euros.

Pope Francis will celebrate Midnight Mass earlier than usual to comply with Italy’s anti-coronavirus curfew and will deliver his Christmas and New Year's blessings in ways that aim to prevent crowds from forming.

The pope’s former treasurer Cardinal George Pell said Monday he feels a dismayed sense of vindication as the financial mismanagement he tried to uncover in the Holy See is now being exposed in a spiraling Vatican corruption investigation.

The Vatican cardinal sacked by Pope Francis amid a corruption investigation is suing an Italian news magazine, claiming that his ruined reputation has eliminated his chances of becoming pope and will undermine the legitimacy of any future papal election.

The Vatican criminal tribunal agreed Oct. 27 to broaden a sex abuse trial involving the Holy See's youth seminary beyond two priests already charged to include the religious organization responsible for running the residence.

A day after donning a face mask for the first time during a liturgical service, Pope Francis was back to his mask-less old ways Oct. 21 despite surging coronavirus infections across Europe and growing criticism of his behavior and the example he is setting.

The Vatican's swirling corruption investigation has taken a mysterious new twist with the arrest on an international warrant of a Sardinian woman said to be close to one of the Holy See's most powerful cardinals before his downfall.

For the first time, a clergy sex abuse trial opened Oct. 14 in the Vatican's criminal tribunal, with one priest accused of molesting an altar boy in the Vatican's youth seminary and another priest accused of covering it up.

Four Swiss Guards have tested positive for coronavirus and were showing symptoms, the Vatican said Monday, Oct. 12, as the surge in infections in surrounding Italy penetrates the Vatican walls.

An Australian man who accused Cardinal George Pell of sexually abusing him denied Monday he was bribed for his testimony, shooting down the latest conspiracy theory to roil the Vatican amid a corruption investigation into its shady finances.

Cardinal George Pell, the former Vatican finance czar who left in 2017 to face child sexual abuse charges in his native Australia, returned to Rome on Sept. 30 after his acquittal to find a Vatican mired in a corruption scandal. 

Pope Francis continued cleaning house in Poland on Aug. 13 following revelations of clergy sexual abuse and cover-up, replacing the powerful archbishop of Gdansk on his 75th birthday.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has been informed about an appeal launched by a group of Catholics in Poland urging intervention into cases where bishops have continued to cover up for priests who sexually molest children.

Pope Francis has ordered a Polish bishop to leave his central diocese and let someone else run it while he is under investigation for covering up cases of sexual abuse that were featured in a second clergy abuse documentary that has rocked Poland's Catholic Church.

Pope Francis welcomed doctors and nurses from the coronavirus-ravaged region of Lombardy to the Vatican on June 20 to thank them for their selfless work and "heroic" sacrifice.

An Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis has gone back to work at the Holy See's financial administration office while under investigation in his native Argentina and at the Vatican for alleged sexual abuse.

A petition signed by some conservative Catholics claiming the coronavirus is an overhyped "pretext" to deprive the faithful of Mass and impose a new world order has run into a bit of a hitch. The highest-ranking signatory, Cardinal Robert Sarah, head of the Vatican's liturgy office, claims he never signed the petition.