Sex Scandal, Scandal | featured news

The recent scandal over handling of child abuse in the Catholic church has again focused attention on celibacy.

Pope Benedict XVI was "deeply affected" by a meeting with victims of abuse by Catholic clergy, he said Wednesday, in his first public comments on the scandal in more than a month.

Pope Benedict said the sexual abuse scandal shaking Roman Catholicism showed the Church needed to do penance for its sins, in a rare public reference by the pope to pedophilia in the priesthood.

A leading cardinal, making an unusual address in defense of Pope Benedict at the start of Easter Sunday Mass, said the Church would not be intimidated by "petty gossip" about sexual abuse of children by priests.

The Vatican says there was no cover-up in the sexual abuse case by an American priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys and denounces what it calls attempts to smear Pope Benedict XVI.

The resignation of the bishop, John Magee, added to the fallout of a scandal that has rocked the Catholic church in Ireland and throughout Europe.

Pope Benedict XVI has rebuked Irish bishops for "grave errors of judgment" in handling clerical sex abuse and ordered a Vatican ...

A police investigation continued Thursday into a Catholic abuse scandal in Brazil, which erupted last week when a network aired a video that it said showed a priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy.

Despite being at the center of one of the most explosive scandals in American politics, John Edwards' mistress said she believes her relationship with the former presidential candidate may be just beginning.

Utah's House majority leader resigned from the Legislature Saturday, two days after acknowledging he paid a woman $150,000 to keep quiet about a nude hot-tubbing incident that took place a quarter century ago when she was a teenager....