Vatican

Steady rain during the day stopped just before Monday’s evening prayers for Pope Francis in Saint Peter’s Square. A line of cardinals sat on a platform, an ageing politburo in black and scarlet. A couple of thousand of the faithful and the curious stood below. Vatican gendarmes, wearing kepis and carrying sidearms, directed people to their places. The Swiss Guard were not on duty. Their gaudy, striped uniforms would anyway have been too exuberant for the occasion, a tenth night in hospital for the Pope, dangerously ill with double pneumonia at the age of 88. Floodlights illuminated the great baroque façade of the most famous building in Christendom. Cobblestones glistened;

What does it mean, in practice, to say that reporting child abuse should be mandatory? It sounds appropriately severe, but it begs the question of what must be reported. It is rarely blindingly obvious that abuse has been committed or who has committed it: it is an iniquity that lives in the shadows. If the proposed law means that one must report every accusation or suspicion of child abuse, this would create an insane burden both on those who report and those – presumably chiefly the police – who must receive the report. Alexis Jay’s IICSA recommendations called for mandatory reporting of any child abuse ‘disclosure’; but surely personal judgment

It was Benedict XVI’s election as Pope, his speeches and his writings that prompted my conversion, and it was his words at Bellahouston Park during his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom that first made me seriously consider my vocation. Without Pope Benedict XVI I would not have become a priest. His passing is for me incredibly personal, but it’s not just because of that, that I find him so incredibly difficult to sum up, it’s because whatever his detractors and admirers insist, he didn’t follow an ideology so much as a person.  ‘Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter

If you think your diary looks busy over the next few days, spare a thought for Pope Francis. The 85-year-old, who was confined to a wheelchair for several months this year, is preparing for a big weekend. He will be spending it in the company of the world’s cardinals – the red-clad figures who are supposed to be his closest advisers but seldom meet en masse in Rome these days. Now the pope has finally decided to gather them together – in the Eternal City’s unforgiving August heat. The pope will be adding to the cardinals’ number today. Tomorrow, he will be dashing off to L’Aquila, the Italian city that