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PORTICELLO, Sicily (AP) — Divers searching the wreck of a superyacht that sank off Sicily found the bodies of five passengers Wednesday, leaving one still missing as questions intensified about why the vessel sank so quickly when a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed. Rescue crews brought four body bags ashore at Porticello. Salvatore Cocina, head of the Sicily civil protection agency, said a fifth body had been located. Divers on-scene said they would try to recover it on Thursday while continuing the search for the sixth. The d...
ROME (AP) — An international campaign to ban surrogacy received a strong endorsement Friday from the Vatican, with a top official calling for a broad-based alliance to stop the "commercialization of life." A Vatican-affiliated university hosted a two-day conference promoting an international treaty to outlaw surrogacy, be it commercial arrangements or so-called altruistic ones. It's based on the campaigners' argument that the practice violates U.N. conventions protecting the rights of the child and surrogate mother. At issue is whether there i...
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis rallied from a winter-long bout of respiratory problems to lead some 60,000 people in Easter celebrations Sunday, making a strong appeal for a cease-fire in Gaza and a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine. Francis presided over Easter Sunday Mass in a flower-decked St. Peter's Square and then delivered a heartfelt prayer for peace in his annual roundup of global crises. Gaza's people, including the small Christian community there, have been a source of constant concern for Francis and Easter in the Holy Land o...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has been trying for years to debunk the idea that its vaunted secret archives are all that secret: It has opened up the files of controversial World War II-era Pope Pius XII to scholars and changed the official name to remove the word "Secret" from its title. But a certain aura of myth and mystery has persisted — until now. The longtime prefect of what is now named the Vatican Apostolic Archive, Archbishop Sergio Pagano, is spilling the beans for the first time, revealing some of the secrets he has uncovered in t...
TORVAIANICA, Italy (AP) — Pope Francis' recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in a working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic. Thanks to the local parish priest, these women now make monthly visits to Francis' Wednesday general audiences, where they are given VIP seats. On any given day, they receive handouts of medicine, cash and shampoo. When C...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis shamed and challenged world leaders on Wednesday to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it's too late, warning that God's increasingly warming creation is fast reaching a "point of no return." In an update to his landmark 2015 encyclical on the environment, Francis heightened the alarm about the "irreversible" harm to people and planet already under way and lamented that once again, the world's poor and most vulnerable are paying the highest price. "We are now unable to halt the enormous d...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — An unprecedented global canvassing of Catholics has called for the church to take concrete steps to promote women to decision-making roles, for a "radical inclusion" of the LGBTQ+ community and for new accountability measures to check how bishops exercise authority. The Vatican on Tuesday released the synthesis of a two-year consultation process, publishing a working document that will form the basis of discussion for a big meeting of bishops and laypeople in October. The synod, as it is known, is a key priority of Pope F...
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Pope Francis warned Saturday that South Sudan's future depends on how it treats its women, as he highlighted their horrific plight in a country where sexual violence is rampant, child brides are common and the maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world. On his second and penultimate day in Africa, Francis called for women and girls to be respected, protected and honored during a meeting in the South Sudanese capital Juba with some of the 2 million people who have been forced by fighting and flooding to flee the...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as "unjust," saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church. "Being homosexual isn't a crime," Francis said during an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and he himself referred to the issue in terms of "...
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis agreed Saturday that the attempt to eliminate Indigenous culture in Canada through a church-run residential school system amounted to a cultural "genocide." Speaking to reporters while en route home from Canada, Francis said he didn't use the term during his trip to atone for the Catholic Church's role in the schools because it never came to mind. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined in 2015 that the forced removal of Indigenous children from their homes and placement in the r...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis authorized spending up to 1 million euros to free a Colombian nun kidnapped by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali, a cardinal testified Thursday, revealing previously secret papal approval to hire a British security firm to find the nun and secure her freedom. Cardinal Angelo Becciu's bombshell testimony could pose serious security implications for the Vatican and Catholic Church, since he provided evidence that the pope was apparently willing to pay ransom to Islamic militants to free a nun, who was e...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — His appeals for an Orthodox Easter truce in Ukraine went unheeded. His planned meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church was canceled. A proposed visit to Moscow? Nyet. Even his attempt to showcase Russian-Ukrainian friendship fell flat. Pope Francis hasn't made much of a diplomatic mark in Russia's war in Ukraine, seemingly unable to capitalize on his moral authority, soft power or direct line to Moscow to nudge an end to the bloodshed or at least a cease-fire. Rather, Francis has found himself in the unusual p...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Indigenous leaders from Canada and survivors of the country's notorious residential schools met with Pope Francis on Monday and told him of the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests and school workers. They came hoping to secure a papal apology and a commitment by the church to repair the harm done. "While the time for acknowledgement, apology and atonement is long overdue, it is never too late to do the right thing," Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told reporters in St. Peter's S...
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis prayed for peace in Ukraine in a ceremony Friday that harked back to a century-old apocalyptic prophecy about peace and Russia that was sparked by purported visions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. Francis invited bishops, priests and ordinary faithful around the world to join him in the consecration prayer, which opened with Francis entering St. Peter's Basilica before an estimated 3,500 people and concluded with Francis sitting alone before a statue of the Madonna. There, he s...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has changed Catholic Church law to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority and to say that laypeople who hold church office also can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes. The new provisions, released Tuesday after 14 years of study, were contained in the revised criminal law section of the Vatican's Code of Canon Law, the in-house legal system that covers the 1.3 billion-member Catholic Church and operates independently from civil laws. The most significant c...
ROME (AP) — A top official at the European Medicines Agency says there's a causal link between AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine and rare blood clots, but that it's unclear what the connection is and that the benefits of taking the shot still outweigh the risks of getting COVID-19. Marco Cavaleri, head of health threats and vaccine strategy at the Amsterdam-based agency, told Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper on Tuesday that the European Union's medicines regulator is preparing to make a more definitive statement on the topic this week. Asked a...
PLAINS OF UR, Iraq (AP) — Pope Francis walked through a narrow alley in Iraq's holy city of Najaf for a historic meeting with the country's top Shiite cleric Saturday, and together they delivered a powerful message of peaceful coexistence in a country still reeling from back-to-back conflicts over the past decade. In a gesture both simple and profound, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani welcomed Francis into his spartan home. The 90-year-old cleric, one of the most eminent among Shiites worldwide, afterward said Christians should live in peace i...
QARAQOSH, Iraq (AP) — Pope Francis urged Iraq’s Christians on Sunday to forgive the injustices against them by Muslim extremists and to rebuild as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the Islamic State group’s horrific reign. “Fraternity is more durable than fratricide, hope is more powerful than hatred, peace more powerful than war,” the pontiff said during prayers for the dead in the city of Mosul, with the call for tolerance that has been the ce...
DENVER (AP) — The Vatican has cleared a retired U.S. bishop of multiple allegations he sexually abused minors and teenagers, rejecting lay experts' determination that a half-dozen claims were credible and instead slapping him on the wrist for what it called "flagrant" imprudent behavior. The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith exonerated retired Cheyenne, Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart of seven accusations of abuse and determined that five others couldn't be proven "with moral certitude." Two other cases involving boys who were 1...
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and media organizations that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican's coronavirus lockdown. In "Let Us Dream," published Tuesday, Francis also criticizes populist politicians who whip up rallies in ways reminiscent of the 1930s, and the hypocrisy of "rigid" conservative Catholics who support them. But he also criticizes the forceful downing of historic statues durin...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has indicated its support for a campaign to provide a proper Christian burial for hundreds of babies and toddlers by first exhuming their bodies from the grounds of a Catholic-run Irish home for unwed mothers. The Vatican's ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo, said in a July 15 letter to the amateur Irish historian behind the campaign that he shared the views of the archbishop of Tuam, Ireland, Michael Neary. Neary has said it was a "priority" for him to re-inter the babies' bodies in c...
ROME (AP) — Italy bid farewell to its coronavirus dead on Sunday with a haunting Requiem concert performed at the entrance to the cemetery of Bergamo, the hardest-hit province in the onetime epicenter of the outbreak in Europe. President Sergio Mattarella was the guest of honor, and said his presence made clear that all of Italy was bowing down to honor Bergamo's dead, "the thousands of men and women killed by a sickness that is still greatly unknown and continues to threaten the world." To respect social distancing rules, the guest list for t...
ROME (AP) — Italy mulled imposing even tighter restrictions on daily life and announced billions in financial relief Wednesday to cushion economic shocks from the coronavirus, its latest efforts to adjust to the fast-evolving health crisis that also silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith, St. Peter's Square. Premier Giuseppe Conte said he will consider requests to toughen Italy's already extraordinary anti-virus lockdown that was extended nationwide Tuesday. Lombardy, Italy's hardest-hit region, is pushing for a shutdown of n...
CODOGNO, Italy (AP) — Italy reported its first death from the new virus from China early Saturday and the number of people infected more than quadrupled due to a cluster of cases that prompted officials to order schools, restaurants and businesses to close. State-run RAI television reported a 78-year-old man, one of two people in northern Veneto region to have been infected, died Friday. Italian news agencies ANSA and LaPresse also reported the death, citing the Veneto regional president, Luca Zaia. In Lombardy, at least 14 new cases were c...
SAMBURU, Kenya (AP) — When Sabina Losirkale went into labor, her sister Scolastica recalls, priests and religious sisters filled the delivery ward waiting to see the color of the baby's skin — and if their worst fears had come to pass. Scolastica and dozens of villagers peered in from behind the clinic fence, as well. A nun screamed. The boy was white — "a mzungu child," Scolastica said, using Kiswahili slang. "How will we cover up this shame?" the sisters fretted, she recalled. The shame that brought this baby into the world: An Italian missi...
