The Pope should have learned by now that “warning” does little in complex situations.

German and European Catholics argue: does the Pope’s discouragement of the hopeful people who once flocked to the movement of aggiornamento and to generous ecumenism four decades ago contribute to the problems?

Jeff Anderson, the US attorney who has spearheaded more than 1,500 lawsuits against the Catholic Church, has now established a law firm in the UK.

A record number of Austrians turned their back on the Catholic Church in 2010, the Church said Tuesday, pointing to the abuse scandal as the main reason.

At least 454 people were injured in the Philippines on Sunday as more than 1 million barefoot devotees joined an annual procession to honour a centuries-old statue of a suffering Jesus Christ, known as the Black Nazarene.

The child abuse scandals rocking Belgium’s powerful Catholic Church are also shaking the faith of followers, with more and more people asking to be struck off baptism registers — a global movement known as “de-baptism“.

In a series of interviews to appear in a book published this week, Pope Benedict XVI says for the first time that while the use of condoms should not be seen as a “moral solution”, it could be justified in stopping the spread of AIDS.

But the Vatican moved Sunday to counter campaigners’ claims of a U-turn in Church policy, emphasising in a statement that condom use was acceptable only in highly “exceptional” cases, AP reports.

Our take: If you don’t play the game, you don’t get to set the rules. What people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is none of the Pope’s — or the Catholic Church’s — business.

Facing a drop in attendance and a shortage of priests, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn plans to close two churches, fold six parishes into three and impose strict budget constraints on all 198 of its parishes.

The move, announced from pulpits on Sunday, was described by church officials as the first phase of a broad consolidation that will result in further closings or mergers over the next two years, eventually affecting every parish in the diocese, which serves an estimated 1.5 million Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens.

For decades tourists have visited the twisting spires of Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia church, but 128 years after construction began Catholic faithful worshipped there for the first time on Sunday.

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass to give his official blessing to the church designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, whose sculptural masterpieces dot the city in the region of Catalonia.

While work is not scheduled to finish for many more years on the intricate and colourful Sagrada Familia, enough had been done to welcome the pontiff, including installing last minute stained-glass windows.

The Vatican has warned Catholic bishops around the world to monitor carefully a secretive traditionalist sect which prays to angels to combat demons.

The Church said some members of the Opus Angelorum sect were carrying out “activities that disturb the ecclesiastical community”.

The papal official running the disgraced Legionaries of Christ has warned that the conservative order faces “certain shipwreck” unless its superiors and members work together to change course following revelations that their founder led a double life.

A Catholic church in the central Swiss city of Lucerne has sparked controversy among believers with an AIDS awareness campaign that involves distributing to teenagers condoms bearing the slogan “protect thy neighbor as thyself.”

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday formally announced the creation of a new Vatican office aimed at reviving the Catholic faith in Europe and other parts of the world that he claims are being ‘de-Christianised.’

In a decree, the pope said the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation would work with bishops in traditionally Christian but increasingly secular countries, to promote the church’s message.

The Vatican has named a Spanish archbishop to investigate Regnum Christi, a cult-like group affiliated with the Legionaries of Christ, the conservative religious order disgraced by revelations its founder sexually abused seminarians and fathered three children.

In an investigative report over the weekend, The Associated Press exposed the cult-like conditions in which the women of Regnum Christi live.

There are many ways to count religious believers in Britain, but no one is counting Catholics by baptism.

Just when the Catholic Church didn’t need another scandal, Italian authorities have seized 23 million euros ($30.2 million) from a Vatican bank account and begun investigating top officials of the Vatican bank in connection with a money laundering probe.

Italian financial police seized the money as a precaution Tuesday and prosecutors placed the Vatican bank’s director general and its chairman — a man who speaks frequently about morality in financing — under investigation for alleged mistakes linked to violations of Italy’s anti-laundering laws, news reports said.

The is probe not the first time the bank — formally known as the Institute for Religious Works— has faced trouble. In the 1980s, it was involved in a major scandal that resulted in a banker being found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.

In a statement, the Vatican said it had been working for some time to make its finances more transparent to comply with anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering regulations.