The nearly life-sized paintings of Saints Peter and Paul are normally kept outside public view
Pope Francis challenged the Vatican's in-house journalists Monday to essentially justify their continued work, asking them how many people actually consume their news in a critique of the office that costs the Holy See more than all its embassies around the world combined. Francis visited the Dicastry of Communications, Vatican Radio and the headquarters of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which is marking its 160th anniversary. He appeared to use the occasion to lay down the gauntlet at a fraught financial time for the Holy See. Facing a major pension funding shortage and a projected 50 million euro (USD 61 million) deficit this year, Francis has ordered salary cuts from 3 per cent to 10 per cent for Vatican employees, both lay and religious, and paused seniority bonuses for two years. Francis has vowed not to fire anyone to offset the economic crisis created by COVID-19 and the pandemic-related shuttering of one of the Holy See's main sources of revenue, ticket sales
Book review of Value(s): Building a Better World For All
The Vatican has said that priests can not bless same-sex unions, calling any such blessing "not licit"
The Holy See and Beijing government jointly announced a two-year extension to the 2018 agreement, which expired Thursday
The national financial crime intelligence agency, two police forces and a public sector corruption watchdog have been drawn into the Vatican scandal
Pope Francis told European anti-money laundering experts Thursday that the Vatican was committed to clean finance, as he denounced financial speculation amid a spiraling corruption investigation
Pompeo made the appeal at a conference on religious freedom organized by the US Embassy to the Holy See, with top Vatican officials in the audience
The accord, first signed in September 2018, is due to be rolled over, possibly for another two years in the coming weeks
The ex-pontiff, who retired in 2013, issued the defence of clerical celibacy in a book written with arch-conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah
Italian television networks that live-stream the Angelus had been concerned that the unprecedented seven-minute delay might have been due to health reasons
The money was frozen following alerts from the Vatican Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF)