Latest Vatican City News

Vatican Museums staff challenge the pope with a legal bid for better terms and treatment

May. 13, 2024 06:37 AM EDT

ROME (AP) — Forty-nine employees of the Vatican Museums have filed a class-action complaint with the Vatican administration demanding better seniority, leave and overtime benefits in an unusual, public challenge to Pope Francis’ governance. The complaint, dated April 23 and made...

Pope urges Italians to have babies as a measure of hope for future

May. 10, 2024 18:28 PM EDT

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis pressed his campaign Friday to urge Italians to have children, calling for long-term policies to help families and warning that the country’s demographic crisis was threatening the future. “The number of births is the first indicator of the hope of a...

Holy Year or holy mess, Vatican and Rome begin dash to 2025 Jubilee with papal bull, construction

May. 09, 2024 12:34 PM EDT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican crossed a key milestone Thursday in the runup to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year. It's a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought...

Pope Francis appoints new bishop in Tennessee after former bishop's resignation under pressure

May. 07, 2024 10:54 AM EDT

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Pope Francis has appointed Reverend James Mark Beckman as Bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, almost a year after the previous bishop resigned under pressure following claims he mishandled sex abuse allegations. The Vatican announced the appointment in its...

Expanding clergy sexual abuse probe targets New Orleans Catholic church leaders

May. 01, 2024 14:23 PM EDT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Authorities have expanded an investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans to include senior church officials suspected of shielding predatory priests for decades and failing to report their crimes to law enforcement. Louisiana...

Pope visits Venice to speak to the artists and inmates behind the Biennale's must-see prison show

Apr. 28, 2024 13:53 PM EDT

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Venice has always been a place of contrasts, of breathtaking beauty and devastating fragility, where history, religion, art and nature have collided over the centuries to produce an otherworldly gem of a city. But even for a place that prides itself on its culture of unusual...

Pope to bring his call for ethical artificial intelligence to G7 summit in June in southern Italy

Apr. 26, 2024 13:23 PM EDT

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis is taking his call for artificial intelligence to be developed and used according to ethical lines to the Group of 7 industrialized nations. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced Friday that Francis had accepted her invitation to attend the G7...

Cisco Systems joins Microsoft, IBM in Vatican pledge to ensure ethical use and development of AI

Apr. 24, 2024 07:27 AM EDT

ROME (AP) — Tech giant Cisco Systems on Wednesday joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically and to benefit the common good. Cisco Systems chief executive Chuck Robbins signed the document,...

Maurizio Cattelan, Zoe Saldana join iconoclastic Vatican Biennale exhibition inside women’s prison

Apr. 20, 2024 01:57 AM EDT

VENICE, Italy (AP) — A pair of nude feet — dirty, wounded and vulnerable — are painted on the façade of the Venice women’s prison chapel. It's the work of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and part of the Vatican’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale contemporary art show in an innovative...

Pope Francis sides with Peruvian villagers who accused Catholic group of trying to steal their land

Apr. 14, 2024 20:40 PM EDT

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday sided with a group of Peruvian villagers who have complained that companies linked to a powerful South American church group have tried to evict them from their land using lawsuits and obscure land titling schemes. In a video recorded...