VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Roman Catholics into Christmas, on Monday urged people to find room for God in their fast-paced lives filled with the latest technological gadgets.

The 85-year-old pope, marking the eighth Christmas season of his pontificate, celebrated a solemn Christmas Eve mass in St Peter’s Basilica, during which he appealed for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and an end to the civil war in Syria.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict made a surprise pre-Christmas visit to the jail holding his former butler on Saturday and pardoned him for stealing and leaking documents that alleged corruption in the Holy See.

The pope and Paolo Gabriele spent about 15 minutes together before Gabriele was freed and allowed to return to his family in their Vatican apartment, a Vatican spokesman said.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, indicating the Vatican’s desire to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, on Friday said the family was threatened “to its foundations” by attempts to change its “true structure”.

The pope made his latest denunciation of gay marriage in a Christmas address to Vatican officials in which he blended religion, philosophy, anthropology and sociology to illustrate the position of the Roman Catholic Church.

ROME (Reuters) – The great mystery of what may go down in wine annals as the crime of the century – the destruction of the equivalent of 80,000 bottles of choice Brunello di Montalcino – may have been solved.

Italian police have named a disgruntled former employee of the exclusive Soldera label at the Case Basse vineyard and estate in Tuscany as the suspected cantina culprit who dumped tens of thousands of liters of fine wine down the drain.

ASSISI, Italy, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister
Mario Monti stood before the cold stones slabs that hold the
remains of St Francis and prayed to the man who preached what
the Franciscans call “the gift of discernment” – the wisdom and
courage to make the right choice.

Monti will need that gift soon.

He has already said he will resign once Italy passes the
next budget law but has yet to announce whether he will run for
prime minister in next year’s elections – which many European
leaders want him to do.

VATICAN CITY, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Friday
called for a new economic model and ethical regulations for
markets, saying the global financial crisis was proof that
capitalism does not protect the weakest members of society.

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of
Peace, which is marked on Jan. 1, Benedict also warned that a
food insecurity was a threat to peace in some parts of the
world.

VATICAN CITY, Dec 13 (Reuters) – Italy’s Catholic Church
used to support Silvio Berlusconi as a bulwark against leftist
governments and fears they might legalise gay marriage and
euthanasia.

There will be no blessing this time.

“Like a bolt out of the blue, the dinosaur returns and
throws the whole country into chaos”.

VATICAN CITY, Dec 12 (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation
bordering on media frenzy, Pope Benedict solemnly put his finger
to a computer tablet device on Wednesday and tried to send his
first tweet – but something went wrong.

Images on Vatican television appeared to show the first try
didn’t work. The pope, who still writes his speeches by hand,
seems to have pressed too hard and the tweet was not sent right
away. So, he needed a little help from his friends.