Roman Catholic, World Leader | featured news

Pope Francis suggested in an interview last year that the Catholic Church's rule that priests be celibate "can change" and admitted he was tempted by a woman as a young seminarian.

Pope Francis urged princes, presidents, sheiks and thousands of ordinary people gathered for his installation Mass on Tuesday to protect the environment, the weakest and the poorest, mapping out a clear focus of his priorities as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio was 39 years old when Argentina’s military junta seized power in March 1976. The seven years that followed were a time of infernal darkness in his country. Union leaders, students, journalists and other left-wing activists were rounded up on the mere suspicion of “subversion.” Many were tortured and raped, or tossed alive from military airplanes into the mouth of the Plata River. As many as 30,000 Argentines were murdered or went missing.

It will be an unprecedented meeting of men and minds, a conversation almost without parallel. When Pope Francis meets the pope emeritus, as is expected perhaps as soon as Friday, he will become the first pontiff in modern history to sit down with his predecessor.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the son of a railway worker, eschews the trappings of his office as cardinal and is committed to conservative, traditional doctrine.

Bettors gambling on Pope Benedict's replacement were very much wrong. Argentina's Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, was a consensus 25-1 underdog to be selected at the conclave, gambling expert R.J. Bell of Pregame.com says. At least 15 names were considered ahead of Bergoglio in 12 books accepting wagers on the papal election in Europe and online outside the United States. "Everyone was paying attention to the top dozen or so favorites," Bell says.

Roman Catholic cardinals signaled Wednesday that they had failed to agree on a new pope during the early session of the second day of secret voting inside the Sistine Chapel.

If the papal conclave were set up like college basketball's March Madness, Cardinal Angelo Scola would have been the overall No. 1 seed — perhaps until today. He is the archbishop of Milan and has long been seen as a safe pick for the next pope, having won favor among American cardinals and a handful of influential European ones. So what stands in his way? Well, there's that pesky anti-mafia investigation he has to deal with. The Guardian's John Hooper and Lizzie Davies report today that anti-mafia detectives are investigating corruption in the health-care system of Lombardy, the Italian region of which Milan is the capital. And Scola is very much intertwined with the most powerful man behind it all...

Bookmakers in betting-mad Britain are cashing in on the Roman Catholic conclave to select a new pope. As cardinals began their deliberations at the Vatican on Tuesday, here's a look at the odds....

On the eve of their conclave to select a new pope, cardinals held their final debate Monday over whether the Catholic Church needs a manager to clean up the Vatican or a pastor to inspire the faithful at a time of crisis.