ROME (Reuters) – Caravaggio’s “Resurrection of Lazarus,” one of the most hauntingly beautiful paintings by the master of chiaroscuro style who lived at the cusp of the 16th and 17th centuries, has been restored for the first time in 60 years.

The painting, also known as The Raising of Lazarus, was done by Caravaggio in Sicily, where he fled from Malta in 1608. It was housed for centuries in the church of the Crociferi fathers in Messina before it was moved to that city’s museum.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican on Tuesday sternly told leaders of American nuns who were accused of being too feminist and politicized that their group “remains under the supreme direction of the Holy See”.

The nuns, who requested the meeting to face Roman Catholic doctrinal officials over the accusations, said they would go back to the United States to decide their next move.

VATICAN (Reuters) – The Vatican said on Monday it hoped to reach a “mutual understanding” with a group of American nuns criticized by a recent Vatican report as feminist and politicized.

On Tuesday, nuns from the Leadership Conference of Women’s Religious (LCWR), whose 1,500 members represent some 80 percent of the more than 60,000 American Catholic nuns, will meet Vatican doctrinal officials to discuss their differences.

ROME (Reuters) – Several decorative pieces have fallen off the Trevi Fountain in Rome, raising the alarm that one of the eternal city’s most famous structures needs a new major restoration.

At the weekend, a few stone laurel leaves fell from the top frieze of the fountain, which marks the terminal point of one of the aqueducts that brought drinking water to ancient Rome.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – For a financial institution whose ATMs offer Latin as a language option, whose offices are below the pope’s windows and where tellers work under the gaze of crucifixes, one might assume the Vatican bank would have a dispensation from earthly travails.

But new judicial woes and internal upheavals at the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), have raised new hurdles for the Vatican, just as it entered the final stretch of years of efforts to join the international club of financial righteousness.

VATICAN CITY, June 8 (Reuters) – For a financial institution
whose ATMs offer Latin as a language option, whose offices are
below the pope’s windows and where tellers work under the gaze
of crucifixes, one might assume the Vatican bank would have a
dispensation from earthly travails.

But new judicial woes and internal upheavals at the bank,
officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR),
have raised new hurdles for the Vatican, just as it entered the
final stretch of years of efforts to join the international club
of financial righteousness.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican criticized a popular American nun on Monday, saying her book on sexual ethics, including topics such as masturbation and homosexuality, contradicted Catholic teaching and must not be used by Catholic educators.

The Vatican’s doctrinal department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a stern “notification” about Sister Margaret A. Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy and a professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Yale University.