Religion, Pope | featured news

Pope Benedict XVI will keep the name Benedict XVI and become the Roman pontiff emeritus or pope emeritus, the Vatican announced on Tuesday, putting an end to days of speculation on how the pope will be addressed once he ceases to be the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics on Thursday.

If evidence was ever needed that the next pope must urgently overhaul the powerful Vatican bureaucracy called the Curia, the scandal over Pope Benedict XVI's private papers is Exhibit A....

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, the choice of the Vatican's guardian of orthodoxy cast a pall over the liberal wing of the flock and left conservatives giddy with the prospect of total victory.

When he became pope at age 78, Benedict XVI was already the oldest pontiff elected in nearly 300 years. He's now 85, and in recent years he has slowed down significantly, cutting back his foreign travel and limiting his audiences.

Dismayed Vatican slams giant sculpture depicting John Paul outside Rome train station.

Pope Benedict took questions from a child in Japan, a Muslim woman in Ivory Coast and a mother caring for a son in a permanent coma in his first televised dialogue with the public, broadcast on Good Friday.

The pope on Friday approved a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II's intercession and set May 1 as the date for his beatification, an event that will be a major morale boost for a church reeling from a wave of violence against Christians and fallout from the clerical sexual abuse scandal.

Pope Benedict XVI has named 24 new cardinals, including a large number of Italians, two Americans and prelates for key posts in Europe, Latin ...

Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday he was ashamed of the "unspeakable" sexual abuse of children by priests, telling the British faithful during Mass in Westminster Cathedral that he was deeply sorry and hoped the church's humiliation would help victims heal.

Pope Benedict XVI, beginning a controversial state visit to Britain, acknowledged Thursday that the Catholic Church failed to act decisively ...