Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005 and sovereign of the Vatican City State. He was later canonised as Pope Saint John Paul II.
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
The Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is a financial institution that is situated inside Vatican City and run by a Board of Superintendence, which reports to a Commission of Cardinals and the Pope. It is not a private bank, as there are no owners or shareholders; it has been established in the form of a juridical canonical foundation, pursuant to its statutes. Since 9 July 2014, its president is Jean-Baptiste de Franssu. The IOR is regulated by the Vatican's financial supervisory body AIF.
The Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly known as the Vatican Secret Archive, is the central repository in the Vatican City of all acts promulgated by the Holy See.
Tarcisio Pietro Evasio Bertone is an Italian retired prelate of the Catholic Church and a Vatican diplomat. A cardinal, he served as Archbishop of Vercelli from 1991 to 1995, as Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop of Genoa from 2002 to 2006, and as Cardinal Secretary of State from 2006 to 2013. Bertone was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2003. On 10 May 2008, he was named Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati.
Paul Casimir Marcinkus was an American archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church and president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, from 1971 to 1989.
Emanuela Orlandi was a Vatican teenager who mysteriously disappeared while returning home from a flute lesson in Rome on 22 June 1983. Sightings of Orlandi in various places have been reported over the years, including inside Vatican City, but all have been unreliable. Her disappearance led to much speculation on the involvement of international terrorism, Italian organized crime, the Banco Ambrosiano, and a plot inside the Holy See to cover up a sex scandal.
Domenico Giani is an Italian security expert who was the Inspector General of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the police and security force of Vatican City.
Crime in the Vatican City consists largely of purse snatching, pick-pocketing and shoplifting perpetrated by tourists upon other tourists. The tourist foot-traffic in St. Peter's Square is one of the main locations for pickpockets in Vatican City.
Holy See–Ireland relations are foreign relations between the Holy See and Ireland. The majority of Irish people identify as Roman Catholic, according to census data. However, views on actual church dogma both on social and spiritual matters varies significantly, and weekly mass attendance is below 40%. The Holy See has an Apostolic Nunciature in Dublin.
Carlo Maria Viganò is a bishop of the Catholic Church who served as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 19 October 2011 to 12 April 2016. He previously served as secretary-general of the Governorate of Vatican City State from 16 July 2009 to 3 September 2011. He is best known for having publicized two major Vatican scandals. These were the Vatican leaks scandal of 2012, in which he revealed financial corruption in the Vatican, and a 2018 letter in which he accused Pope Francis and other church leaders of covering up sexual abuse allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
The ecclesiastical response to Catholic sexual abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the Church's child sexual abuse scandal. The Catholic Church's response to the scandal can be viewed on three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at all three levels in parallel with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent.
The Catholic Church has been criticised in fiction, such as literature, film and television. Polemics have also been written on the Church and its practices. Some examples are the anti-Catholic stereotypes that filled Gothic fiction of Anglican England, the films of Luis Buñuel who took issue with the Church in Spain, the humor of some US television pundits like Rosie O'Donnell, and the rhetoric of some fundamentalist preachers.
The Murphy Report is the brief name of the report of a Commission of investigation conducted by the Irish government into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin. It was released in 2009 by Judge Yvonne Murphy, only a few months after the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Sean Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Roman Catholic religious institutes.
Giovanni Angelo Becciu is an Italian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis made him a cardinal on 28 June 2018. On 24 September 2020, he resigned the rights associated with the cardinalate.
His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI is a book published by the Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi of confidential letters and memos between Pope Benedict XVI and his personal secretary. The letters in the book portray the Vatican as a corrupt hotbed of jealousy, intrigue and underhanded factional fighting.
The Vatican leaks scandal, also known as Vati-Leaks, is a scandal beginning in 2012 initially involving leaked Vatican documents, exposing corruption; in addition, an internal Vatican investigation has purportedly uncovered the blackmailing of homosexual clergy by individuals outside the Church. Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published letters from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in which he exposed corruption that caused the Holy See to pay increased prices for contracts.
The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI took effect on 28 February 2013 at 20:00 CET, following his announcement of it on 11 February. It made him the first pope to relinquish the office since Gregory XII was forced to resign in 1415 to end the Western Schism, and the first pope to voluntarily resign since Celestine V in 1294.
Secrets of the Vatican is an American television documentary film. It was first aired on the PBS Channel on 25 February 2014 as an episode of PBS' Frontline TV series.
Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda is a Vatican monsignor who was jailed for leaking official documents in the Vatileaks scandal. The clergyman admitted to passing classified documents to journalists. He is highest-ranking Vatican official ever to be arrested. Pope Francis granted him clemency after he served half of the 18-month jail sentence.
