VATICAN CITY -- Retired Pope Benedict XVI wants his name removed as co-author of a book defending priestly celibacy but the publisher insists Benedict wrote the book with Cardinal Robert Sarah.

WASHINGTON -- Two popes and multiple priests, cardinals and archbishops received part of $600,000 in financial gifts from former Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, who controlled a discretionary fund, according to a report published Dec. 27 by The Washington Post.

From a Catholic perspective, few if any dates were more significant during the soon-to-close decade than  Feb.11, 2013.

Anthony McCarten wants the truth and nothing but the truth. To get at the truth, he has made up a fictional dialogue between the Church’s two living popes.

VATICAN CITY -- A change to the Code of Canon Law made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 provides a canonical path to allow the ordination of women deacons, a Brazilian bishop said.

WARSAW, Poland -- A German bishop has vowed to intensify "preventive measures" after two church-sponsored reports confirmed systemic violence and abuse at his diocese's cathedral schools between 1945 and 1995, including 30 years when their famous choir was run by Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, brother of retired Pope Benedict XVI.

VATICAN CITY -- "The unity of the church is always at risk" and has been throughout its history, but "its unity always has been stronger than its internal struggles and wars," said retired Pope Benedict XVI.

Pioneers

As 50 years have passed since the legalization of abortion in Canada, we should acknowledge some of the early pioneers in the fight to stop the passage of this inhumane law.

ROME -- Cardinal Robert Sarah has blasted what he called “lazy” and “superficial” reactions bordering on “intellectual hysteria” to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s recent notes on the clerical abuse scandal.

VATICAN CITY - The clerical sexual abuse crisis is rooted in the "egregious event" of the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960s and a collapse in the belief of absolute truth and in God, retired Pope Benedict XVI wrote in a lengthy reflection.

One of the great joys of dealing with chronic pain is that I can read books about the faith all the time without feeling guilty. 

Canada’s David Saint-Jacques joined the exclusive club of space explorers when he blasted off to the International Space Station on Dec. 3, almost 46 years after NASA ended the Apollo program that put men on the moon. On Dec. 19, 1972, the last Apollo mission ended with the splashdown of the Apollo 17 capsule. It was an historic achievement, though by this time — after five previous moon landings in three years — the excitement of moon landings was waning. The last moon mission, however, held a deeper meaning for Fr. Harold O’Neill, who was a professor of dogmatic theology at St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto. At the time he wrote this for The Register, he was studying at the University of Regensburg in West Germany, where he drew inspiration from a lecture by Professor Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.

The rich man who came to Jesus looking for the meaning of life had kept all the commandments. Still, an emptiness remained. “What do I still lack?” he asked Jesus (Matthew 19:20).