The Roman Catholic bishops in Pope Benedict XVI's native Bavaria sought Tuesday to deal with a sexual abuse scandal whose ever-widening scope has left church leaders baffled. "I would not have expected such a multitude of cases," Bavarian Bishop Ludwig Schick, who is hosting his colleagues' meeting ...

Pope Benedict XVI will visit Scotland and England in September in a four-day visit combining preaching and diplomacy, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday. British officials described it as an unprecedented "papal visit with the status of a state visit," though some of the usual trappings laid on for a ...

Pope Benedict XVI will make the first ever official papal visit to Britain with a four-day trip in September, the government announced Tuesday. The September 16-19 visit by the 82-year-old pontiff, at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II, will see the first official meeting between the British monarch and a pope. The visit, which follows recent tensions between the Vatican ...

A priest housed with the current pope's approval in 1980 while under suspicion of paedophilia and convicted six years later has been suspended from duty, the pontiff's former diocese said. The priest, named only as Peter H., 62, "was banned from working with children and young people. He broke this restriction," the diocese of Munich and Freising in ...