A man in a clerical habit abused me in the church hall of the Johannesburg parish of the Immaculate Conception in Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank. It happened after a children's Christmas party -- and my abuser was a Catholic cleric. My uncle, Cardinal Owen McCann, was the archbishop of Cape Town at the time. His position as president of the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference was not enough to deter my abuser.
Australia's Catholic church has taken a swipe at foul-mouthed British chef Gordon Ramsay and demanded his reality television shows be either taken off air or shown at a later time. One episode broadcast recently featured Ramsay using a four-letter expletive more than 80 times, while he also shouts at a chef saying: "You French pig."
The exhumed body of Padre Pio, a saint considered a miracle worker by his devotees, attracted thousands of pilgrims on Thursday when it went on display 40 years after his death. Padre Pio is one of the Catholic Church's most popular saints and during his lifetime the Italian monk was said to have had the stigmata.
Football folk make the kind of throwaway remarks that would be alarming coming from anyone else. "Some people think football is a matter of life and death," Bill Shankly, the late Liverpool coach, once said. "I assure you, it's much more serious than that."
Christians around the world celebrated Christmas on Tuesday as the Catholic leader in the Holy Land pleaded for peace in the Middle East and Pope Benedict XVI spoke against selfishness. Iraqi Christians meanwhile celebrated a fearful Christmas in the shadow of suicide bombings and sectarian violence.
Such was the mania gripping New York as the pope's visit to the United States reached its emotional culmination that at least one busload of visitors erroneously mobbed what turned out to be a life-sized cardboard cut-out, propped in front of the Mount Carmel Catholic bookshop on 187th Street.
Pope Benedict, celebrating a stadium Mass for 45 000 people, acknowledged on Thursday that the United States paedophile priests scandal caused "indescribable pain and harm" to victims but asked Catholics to love their pastors. "No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," he said.
Protesters, unfazed by violent clashes with police hours earlier, on Friday vowed to continue their battle against a plan to demolish 218 public housing buildings in New Orleans, a bid that has further highlighted the growing tensions in a city struggling to recover two years after Hurricane Katrina.
They knew it would be risky to exhibit a homoerotic version of Christ's Last Supper, but curators at the museum of Vienna's Roman Catholic cathedral weren't ready for a barrage of angry messages and calls to be shut down. The source of the dispute is a retrospective honouring Austria's cherished artist Alfred Hrdlicka.
The accountancy firm that looks after children's entertainers the Wiggles is not an obvious place to search for the Holy Grail, but that's where the trail led on Tuesday night. It started with a simple quest -- what on earth is a large advertisment headlined "The Ancient & Noble Order of The Knights Templar" doing in the Daily Telegraph?
Northern Ireland's largest Protestant party scrambled on Wednesday to secure a seamless transfer of power after its firebrand leader, Ian Paisley, announced his departure, drawing tributes from all sides. Paisley said on Tuesday he would step down as Democratic Unionist Party head in May.
The Vatican has called on Catholics to atone for the sex abuse scandals that have engulfed their church in recent years by taking part in what may be the largest global prayer initiative ever seen. Cardinal Cláudio Hummes said that every diocese in the world should name a priest to work full-time on the arrangements for the "perpetual adoration" of the eucharist.
President Robert Mugabe and his chief rival will attend an emergency summit of Southern African leaders to present their conflicting views of the crisis paralysing the country in the wake of hotly contested elections, spokespersons for the men said on Thursday. The opposition has said it will not take part in an election run-off.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Bleary-eyed readers of the Mail & Guardian Online on Tuesday April 1 could be forgiven for falling for Eskom's bold new "sector-sharing plan" to save electricity. We round up some of the day's best pranks.
