The UN has said that the Vatican should "immediately remove" all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers. The UN watchdog for children's rights denounced the Holy See for adopting policies which allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.

Pope Francis said on Friday that he took personal responsibility for the harm done by priests who sexually abused children, and he pledged that the Roman Catholic Church would confront the issue unflinchingly and impose sanctions when necessary. “The church is aware of this damage,” he said. “It is personal moral damage, carried out by men of the church, and we will not take one step backward regarding how we will deal with this problem.

Two popes will become saints this week. On Sunday, Pope Francis will officially add to the Roman Catholic canon the names of two of his recent predecessors: Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII. It would be better if he were not doing so.

Pope Francis would absolutely baptize an alien from Mars, if one showed up at the Vatican and asked for it. During his weekly homily on Monday, Franics said that aliens — which he imagines could be "Green, with that long nose and big ears, just like children paint them" — should be baptized just like anyone else who asks for it, because it's not up to any human to decide who should receive the Holy Spirit.

The crisis isn’t over. The head of the world’s largest support group for victims has a 15-point checklist for Francis.

Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that "about 2%" of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles. The Pope said that abuse of children was like "leprosy" infecting the Church, according to the Italian La Repubblica newspaper. He vowed to "confront it with the severity it demands".

Pope Francis made an emotional plea for peace on Sunday in an impromptu addition to comments delivered at his weekly Angelus address in Saint Peter's Square. As the Argentinian-born pontiff wrapped up his regular address to the faithful, he spoke of the upcoming centenary of the outbreak of World War One and said his thoughts were on the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine in particular.

The wildly popular Francis is more than a pontiff of the people. He’s an elite manager who’s reforming the Vatican’s troubled finances.

Pope Francis married 20 couples on Sunday, some of whom had already lived together and had children, in the latest sign that the Argentine pontiff wants the Catholic church to be more open and inclusive.

Pope Francis is the favourite to win this year's Nobel Peace Prize, according to bookmakers. The Argentinian Pope is now the 5-2 front-runner for the award, which will be announced by the Nobel Institute in Oslo on Friday, according to bookmaker's William Hill. Paddy Power also has him as a strong contender.

Pope Francis on Sunday, as he beatified Pope Paul VI who implemented the Second Vatican Council's vast changes, called on the church to adapt to "changing conditions of society." His remarks took on added meaning as the bishops ended a two-week conference by rejecting landmark wording that would soften the church's stance toward homosexuality and divorce.

Pope Francis on Saturday sidelined a powerful American cardinal who has emerged as an unabashed conservative critic of the reform agenda and the leadership style that the Argentine pontiff has brought to the Roman Catholic Church.

The Turkish man who shot and injured former Pope John Paul II in 1981 has laid flowers on the late pontiff's tomb in the Vatican. Mehmet Ali Agca told police he felt he needed to make the gesture, Italian media report. It comes 31 years to the day that the Pope visited Agca in prison and forgave him for the attempt on his life.

Pope Francis on Sunday named new cardinals to the group that will choose his successor, with appointments that strengthened the Catholic Church in Asia, Africa and Latin America and further shifted its power center away from the developed world. It was the second time the 78-year-old Francis has used the appointment of cardinals to put his stamp on the 1.2 billion-member church. The two sets of appointments increase the chances that the next pontiff will, like Francis, be a non-European.

As a head of state and leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, Pope Francis has received hundreds of gifts from devotees and world leaders since his election in 2013. But the pontiff is not the type to keep them in a trophy cabinet or let them gather dust in a Vatican warehouse. Instead, he will raffle the presents — including a car and expensive hat — to raise money for the poor, according to the Holy See.

The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it had closely guarded for 700 years. A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, "'Processus Contra Templarios -- Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars'" is a massive work and much more than a book -- with a 5,900 euros ($8,333) price tag.

Pope Francis marked the second anniversary of his election on Friday by giving an interview in which he says he expects his time at the Vatican to only last for another two or three years. "I have a feeling my pontificate will be brief," the 78-year-old told Mexico's Televisa channel. "Four or five years, I don't know. Two years have already gone by.

The Vatican says force may be necessary to stop attacks on Christians and other Middle East minorities by Islamic State (IS) if no political solution is found. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's top diplomat at the UN in Geneva, said jihadists were committing "genocide" and must be stopped. The Vatican traditionally opposes military intervention in the region.

Pope Francis has rejected France's new ambassador to the Vatican because he is gay, French media has reported. Francis I, who has won praise from liberals for his campaigns against poverty and conciliatory stance towards homosexuality, is yet to accept President François Hollande's nomination for the post, Laurent Stefanini, a senior diplomat and the president's chief of protocol.

Pope Francis has launched a blistering attack on the "new colonialism" of austerity, describing unfettered capitalism as "the dung of the devil" and apologising for the Catholic church's role in the conquest of indigenous populations in the Americas.