VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict marks two milestones this week and while his health appears stable, signs of frailty have again prompted speculation over whether he will be the first pontiff in seven centuries to resign.

Benedict, one of the oldest popes in history, turns 85 on Monday, and on Thursday he marks the seventh anniversary of his election as successor to the immensely popular John Paul II.

ROME, April 13 (Reuters) – Woody Allen says his new movie
“To Rome, With Love,” is a tribute to all the old Italian films
that influenced him as a young artist but he has one wish: that
more Italians could hear his voice in the original rather than
the dubbed versions.

The film, which stars Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni,
Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and
Ellen Page, had its world premiere in the Eternal City on
Friday.

ROME (Reuters) – Tourists in Rome on Thursday would have been forgiven if they had thought for a moment that they had stepped back in time.

Roman centurions, complete with red skirts, tunics, armor, swords and feathered helmets, fought in front of the Colosseum. But this time it was with a modern enemy – Rome’s city police.

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s Northern League party suffered another blow to its prestige on Monday when the son of its iconic founder became the latest victim of a growing scandal over misuse of party funds.

Renzo Bossi, 24, resigned as a regional counsellor of the Lombardy regional government, four days after his father Umberto, 70, stepped down as national party leader.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A fatigued-looking Pope Benedict threw his weight behind a United Nations plan to end bloodshed in Syria in his Easter Sunday message, calling for “an immediate commitment” to peace efforts there.

The 84-year-old pope gave a shorter-than-usual blessing from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica after an outdoor Easter Mass attended by more than 100,000 people in a St Peter’s Square bedecked with yellow and white flowers.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Catholics into Easter, said on Saturday technological progress, in the absence of awareness of God and moral values, posed a threat to the world.

Benedict presided at a solemn Easter vigil Mass in St Peter’s Basilica to usher the 1.2 billion-member church into the most important day of its liturgical calendar.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Catholics into Easter, said on Saturday technological progress, in the absence of awareness of God and moral values, posed a threat to the world.

Benedict presided at a solemn Easter vigil Mass in St Peter’s Basilica to usher the 1.2 billion-member church into the most important day of its liturgical calendar.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Thursday re-stated the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on women priests and warned that he would not tolerate disobedience by clerics on fundamental teachings.

Benedict, who for decades before his 2005 election was the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer, delivered an unusually direct denunciation of disobedient priests in a sermon at a morning Mass on Holy Thursday, the day the Church commemorates the day Christ instituted the priesthood.