Austen Ivereigh

There are 49 constituencies still to call but it is clear that neither Labor nor the Conservatives will be able to reach the majority of 326 seats even when obvious allies are added in The Conservatives have 280 seats Labor 240 Lib-Dems 52 others 27 Even if the Liberal-Democrats form an allia

Tomorrow I vote nbsp And it s not easy I thought it would be made easier by the Citizens UK General Election Assembly on Monday night declaration of interest I helped organize it which was in the words of the Archbishop of Westminster last night the most interesting moment of the election

The Legionaries of Christ will not be closed down but face a path of purification says the Vatican in the wake of a detailed report Revelations that the order s Mexican founder Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado was a serial paedophile who secretly fathered children have shattered the Legionaries and

Monday s headlines in Britain s two most popular right-wing newspapers are so off the wall they are laughable Offensive Foreign Office memo threatens Pope s historic visit claims the Mail Pope could cancel UK visit over offensive foreign office memo screams the Telegraph The fact that th

At the end of Mass this morning in my central London church my parish priest stepped forward to read the powerful gracious and unambiguous statement on clerical sex abuse issued last Friday by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales The repeated use of the words shame scandal crimes r

On this side of the Atlantic we don t go for headlines with commas in them — an American newsroom custom which we ve resisted The obvious headline was Belgian bishop resigns over abuse But you would have thought wouldn t you that meant a bishop resigning for failing to handle properly the ca

Although it is the Vatican and the Church in central Europe that have been under the spotlight over abuse recently the media coverage has been so intense that the bishops of England and Wales have felt it necessary to respond publicly to the firestorm in an unusual statement All parishes in Englan

The Vatican cardinal whose contempt for civil authorities was revealed last week in a 2001 letter to a French bishop has been disinvited by a traditionalist Catholic group who wanted him to celebrate a Old Rite Mass at the Cathedral in Washington DC The Paulus Institute who had spent three years p

Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum nbsp Habemus papam I rsquo ll not forget the moment Pope Benedict XVI was elected five years ago today I was on the hill above St Peter rsquo s Square in the BBC tent going live for the umpteenth time The cardinals had been in conclave for two days and the British

Uplifting news from Malta where Pope Benedict recently concluded his visit by a surprise private meeting with eight clerical sex abuse victims A Vatican statement said the Pope was deeply moved by their stories and expressed his shame and sorrow over what victims and their families have