Pope Benedict is to travel to the Italian region of Abruzzo on April 28 to meet people affected by the recent earthquake.

In his Easter message to an Italy rocked by earthquakes and a world shaken by financial turmoil, food shortages, poverty, climate change, violence and terrorism, Pope Benedict XVI said "it is urgent to rediscover grounds for hope".

Bishops across the United States have continued to express their disapproval of a decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at the University of Notre Dame.

Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, the former bishop who was elected in 2008, has admitted that he had fathered a child, now nearly two years old, who was born before Lugo was laicised. 

A cardinal from Hong Kong has said his relationship with the local government is tense and he urged its leader, a Catholic, to better serve the people. 

A meeting was held in the Vatican this week to discuss the difficult situation of the Church in China.

French bishops have launched a "dialogue offensive" in response to criticisms of recent Papal pronouncements on the rehabilitation of Catholic traditionalists and the use of condoms to combat AIDS. 

The remains of an English-born Jesuit archbishop, who died in Rome during the Second Vatican Council, have been re-interred in Zimbabwe - almost half a century after his death.

Pope Benedict XVI met with representatives of Cameroon's Muslim minority yesterday shortly before he celebrated Mass for thousands of faithful from Africa's expanding Catholic flock in the capital's football stadium.

The decision by a Los Angeles clinic to suspend its ‘designer baby’ programme has been described by ethical campaigners in the UK as ‘merely delaying the inevitable’.