Nicole Winfield

The Vatican's financial trial took a series of surreal turns Thursday.

A Vatican cardinal testified  that Pope Francis himself ordered the ouster of the Holy See's auditor-general, turning the tables on a scandal that had sparked questions about the Vatican's commitment to financial transparency and accountability.

The Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, is heading to Kyiv this week as the Holy See seeks to balance its concern for Ukrainians amid Russia's war with its efforts to keep open a channel of dialogue with Moscow.

Doctors have prescribed a wheelchair, cane and physical therapy to help heal Pope Francis' bad knee. He has other ideas.

Pope Francis' willingness to work despite knee pain that has made walking nearly impossible shows other older adults that they have wisdom and experience to offer younger generations, a top Vatican cardinal said Tuesday.

Pope Francis on April 29 called on Catholic bishops conferences to create special centers to welcome victims of clergy sexual abuse, warning that the faithful would continue losing trust in the church hierarchy without more transparency and accountability.

The former director of the Vatican's financial watchdog agency testified April 27 that Pope Francis asked him to help the Vatican secretariat of state get full control of a London property, once again putting the pope and his top deputies in the spotlight for their roles in the problematic deal.

Pope Francis made key appointments in his newly reformed Vatican bureaucracy April 23,  naming new deputies for the doctrine office and confirming the highest-ranked woman in the Holy See as the No. 2 in the development office

A new book sets out to examine the current state of Vatican affairs through the lens of the nine-year retirement of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. And it isn't pretty.

A Vatican investigation into allegations that the former top aide to St. John Paul II was negligent in handling sex abuse claims in his native Poland has cleared him of wrongdoing, the Vatican's embassy in Poland said April 22.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on April 21 as the war in Ukraine and the millions of refugees it has created cast a shadow over two leaders who have long sought closer ties with Russia.

The former head of the Vatican's financial watchdog testified on April 5 that the agency launched an intelligence investigation into a suspicious London real estate deal after it learned about it but had no power to stop the Vatican secretariat of state from concluding it.

Pope Francis allegedly authorized negotiating an exit strategy for a key suspect in the Vatican's big embezzlement trial and was so satisfied with the outcome that he paid for a celebratory dinner at a fancy Roman fish restaurant the night the 15-million- euro payout closed.

Indigenous leaders from Canada and survivors of the country's notorious residential schools met with Pope Francis and told him of the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests and school workers.

Vatican officials on Monday defended the last-minute rollout of Pope Francis' reform of the Holy See bureaucracy while also painting it as one of the most consequential moves of his pontificate.

A cardinal testified that he donated 125,000 euros ($140,000) of Vatican money to a Sardinian diocese for purely charitable reasons, rejecting Vatican prosecutors' claims that the money benefitted his brother who ran the charity.

Cardinal George Pell has called for the Vatican's doctrine office to intervene and reprimand two leading European Catholic churchmen who called for changes in Catholic teaching on sexuality and homosexuality.

Pope Francis has yet to publicly condemn Russia by name for its invasion of Ukraine or publicly appeal to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some are not satisfied with the Vatican tradition of quiet diplomacy.

The Vatican's criminal tribunal on Tuesday resoundingly rejected defense motions to dismiss a landmark financial fraud case and ruled the trial will go ahead with the questioning of a cardinal scheduled for later this month.