VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A U.N. committee has accused U.S. legal authorities of failing to fully pursue cases of child sex abuse in religious groups, an issue especially troubling the Roman Catholic Church.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child wrote this month that it was “deeply concerned” to find widespread sexual abuse by clerics and staff of religious institutions and “a lack of measures … to properly investigate cases and prosecute them”.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After Pope Benedict’s papacy of almost eight years, the cardinals who will elect the next Catholic pontiff are more European, more conservative and more “Roman” than the conclave that chose him in 2005.

Benedict has handpicked more than half the men who will elect his successor. The rest were chosen by the late Pope John Paul, a Pole with whom the German pope shared a determination to reassert a more orthodox Catholicism in the new millennium.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – With passing phrases and striking images, Pope Benedict is assembling a last testament to his Roman Catholic Church, urging its leaders to put aside their rivalries and think only of the unity of the faith.

The message, slipped into statements both before and after his shock resignation announcement on Monday, reads like a veiled rebuke to leading cardinals jockeying for influence in the upcoming conclave and in the papacy that it will produce.

VATICAN CITY, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Few authors can boast that
Pope Benedict helped sell their books, but the pontiff’s shock
resignation has boosted interest in all things Catholic just as
veteran Vatican journalist John Thavis is about to publish.

“The Vatican Diaries,” a behind-the-scenes look at the
faith’s fabled nerve centre, goes on sale on Feb. 21, just one
week before the pope takes the nearly unprecedented step of
quitting as the head of the world’s largest church.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict may have shocked the world by announcing his resignation on Monday, but some cardinals apparently started maneuvering for the succession as long as two years ago.

Papal elections are among the world’s most mysterious, with no declared candidates and more bluffing than a high-stakes poker game. No cardinal can openly campaign for a job whose election is said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.