Vatican City

VATICAN CITY - The timing said it all. A smiling Pope Benedict XVI had just wrapped up an official visit to Portugal in May 2010, during which he praised Catholic organizations striving to protect families based on "the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman. " But barely 72 hours after the pontiff flew home, the president of Portugal declared that he would sign a bill allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed. With Spain having granted such rights five years earlier, the move turned the entire Iberian Peninsula, historically a Catholic stronghold, into an unlikely hitching post for homosexuals.

VATICAN CITY - As he begins work, Pope Francis will find a pile of files in his in-tray on sex abuse and squabbling cardinals. But he will also come across a thick dossier on the Vatican's secretive bank, which his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, tried to drag into the daylight after years of suspicion that it was a haven for money launderers. After struggling to get the Vatican onto a coveted European "white list" for clean banks, Benedict suffered a setback last year when his top manager, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was fired by the bank's board, officially for incompetence.

VATICAN CITY  - In their private meetings before electing the new pope, Roman Catholic cardinals took note when one of their members rose to speak  - clearly, quietly and persuasively  - about the need to purify the church and streamline its unwieldy bureaucracy. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio seemed to sum up the very themes, problems and challenges the leaders were debating. He was forceful without being abrasive, one cardinal recalled Thursday. By the time they strode solemnly into the magnificent Sistine Chapel and closed away the outside world on Tuesday, many of the cardinals had significantly refined their lists of candidates.

VATICAN CITY - Huge crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square and spilled into side streets Tuesday morning as Pope Francis prepared for his official inauguration as leader of the Roman Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers. Up to a million people are expected to jam into and around this tiny city-state to witness the highly ceremonial event, which will also be attended by royalty, government leaders and religious figures from around the world. Pilgrims began camping out overnight to claim a spot from which to watch the installation of the 266th pope in the church's history and the first from the Americas.

The 115 Roman Catholic cardinals charged with selecting a new pope to lead the world's 1.2 billion Catholics cast their first votes Tuesday and continued their secret deliberations, signaling with black smoke from the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City that they were not finished. The voting will continue until a candidate receives a two-thirds majority among the cardinal electors. At that time, the selection of a new pope will be announced to the public with white smoke from the Sistine Chapel and the ringing of the bells of St. Peter's Basilica.

VATICAN CITY - In rainy Saint Peter's Square, the mix of opinions about the surprise announcement Monday that Pope Benedict XVI planned to resign ranged from admiration to anger. James Cadman, 29, a seminarian from London, said the 85-year-old Benedict's decision to step down for health reasons rather than dying in office like his predecessor “showed his greatness.” “By putting the good of the church before his own desires he made this one of the greatest moments of his papacy,” Cadman said.

Pope John Paul II goes on the road again Wednesday for an 11-day journey through four countries in Asia. The Pope's first trip outside Europe since 1993 takes him first to Manila, where he will attend his church's International Youth Day ceremonies. From there, the 74-year-old leader of the world's more than 1 billion Roman Catholics will travel to Papua New Guinea, Australia and Sri Lanka before returning to the Vatican.

Pope John Paul II journeys to crime-tossed Sicily this weekend for a pastoral visit certain to include a round of pontifical Mafia-bashing. The visit will begin Friday and end Sunday, Vatican aides say. One of the Pope's regular visits to Italian parishes, the trip to industrial Catania on the island's east coast echoes a papal pilgrimage last spring to Agrigento in the heart of Mafia country further west.

The Vatican adds a paternal voice to growing concern about international migration with a six-day conference opening Monday entitled "Solidarity in Favor of New Migrations." European Community President Jacques Delors will be the keynote speaker at a conference offering testimony to the emergence of migration as a hot global issue. Other speakers on the Vatican agenda include Sadako Ogata, U.N.

VATICAN CITY -- Before crowned heads, government leaders and masses of the faithful, Pope Francis formally took office Tuesday as head of the Roman Catholic Church in a ceremony replete with pageantry and symbols from ancient Christendom. In a homily, the church's 266th pontiff exhorted his listeners and 1.2 billion followers to care for the environment and for other people, especially the poor and forgotten -- themes closely associated with the saint whose name he picked for his own as pope, Francis of Assisi.

VATICAN CITY - Amid elaborate ritual and ancient symbols of Christendom, Pope Francis began the first official day of his pontificate Tuesday by setting out a vision for the Roman Catholic Church of mutual caring and of concern for the environment, urging followers to pay special attention to society's poor and neglected. Before tens of thousands of pilgrims and dignitaries gathered for his inauguration in St. Peter's Square, the pontiff made clear that his papacy would reflect the themes of service and love of nature so closely identified with the saint after whom he named himself, Francis of Assisi.

VATICAN CITY - Few people were more shocked at the choice of a Jesuit as pope than the Jesuits. There had never been a Jesuit pope before Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected last week, and he was the only Jesuit among the 115 cardinals who voted in the papal conclave. (The only other one, from Indonesia, was too ill to attend.) Pope Francis, who will be installed formally Tuesday before more than 100 heads of state and foreign delegations, including Vice President Joe Biden and what will undoubtedly be an adoring crowd, has already shown himself to be a different kind of pope.

ROME - Snarled traffic, cheering crowds, well-wishers from around the world. Pope Francis' first scheduled public appearance? That, and the Rome Marathon too. The annual long-distance race clashed on the calendar Sunday with the new pope's inaugural Angelus blessing in St. Peter's Square, but both brought thousands of people onto the streets of Rome and Vatican City, including some who happily switched their attention between haggard runners clad...

VATICAN CITY - The pope may be considered by his followers to be head of the universal Catholic Church, but that doesn't stop national feelings from bubbling to the surface when a new pontiff is named. Before the conclave this week to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, patriotism was on frequent display in St. Peter's Square by pilgrims waving national flags in hope that a man from their country would be selected. Argentines went wild when the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, emerged as the cardinals' choice to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

VATICAN CITY - Two popes? Before Benedict XVI resigned last month, the last pope to do so was Gregory XII in 1415. Gregory acted to end the wrenching and violent Great Schism of the Roman Catholic Church, when more than one man claimed St. Peter's throne. What's happening today is completely different; no one is fighting over the chair. Yet Benedict's decision has resulted in hand-wringing over the unprecedented-in-modern-times specter of two men in white cassocks living, figuratively speaking, under the same Vatican roof: newly appointed Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict.

VATICAN CITY -- Like a man who has somehow won the lottery against his will, newly appointed Pope Francis has already begun refusing some of the privileges of office, in keeping with the austere, almost ascetic ways he has pursued as a Jesuit priest. For his unveiling as pope Wednesday to a throng in St. Peter's Square, he shunned a special red, fur-trimmed half-cloak and golden cross in favor of plain white vestments and his usual iron cross. To go pray at a church in central Rome on Thursday, he hopped into a Vatican sedan, not the papal limousine.

VATICAN CITY - Instead of the bus, a chauffeur. No longer a tiny apartment, but a penthouse suite. Not just a new name, but his own personal coat of arms. Such are the perks and trappings of office being thrust upon Pope Francis as he assumes leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers. There's just one catch: He may not want them. Like a man who has won the lottery against his will, the new pontiff has already begun refusing some of the privileges that come with his new job, in keeping with the austere, almost ascetic ways he has pursued up to now as a Jesuit priest.