Pope Francis acknowledges “with shame and repentance” the Catholic Church’s failure to bring to justice those involved in a clerical child sex abuse report.

Catholic dioceses and religious orders in the US have paid out nearly $3 billion in out-of-court settlements and court order awards to sex abuse victims since the mid-1980s, an American watchdog group says.

The Vatican said on Thursday Pope Francis was on the side of victims of more than 300 "predator" priests in the United States.

The latest revelation of widespread child sexual abuse by US Catholic clergy has given impetus to efforts by legislators to make it easier to prosecute such cases.

An Australian ex-archbishop convicted of covering sexual abuse of children by other priests has been spared prison and allowed to serve his 1-year term at the comfort of a private home.

Protest spreads from the Arab and Druze communities in the Israeli-occupied territories to the Christians against a newly-adopted law that calls Israel “the exclusive nation-state of the Jews.”

Sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the US and other countries has largely been perpetrated by homosexual clergy, a US pastor says.

Pope Francis on Saturday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the US Catholic Church’s most prominent figures.

Revelations that one of the most respected US cardinals allegedly sexually abused both boys and adult seminarians have raised questions about who in the Catholic Church hierarchy knew.

An Australian archbishop is sentenced to 12 months in detention for covering up sexual child abuse by a priest.