Time magazine has named Pope Francis its person of the year, saying that in nine months in office the head of the Catholic Church had become a new voice of conscience.

Shouting "murderer" and "executioner," hundreds of people jeered as the coffin of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke arrived Tuesday for a funeral Mass celebrated by a splinter Catholic group opposed to the Vatican's outreach to Jews.

In the end, there was nobody Edith Piaf couldn't win over - with the tragic singer set to be honoured with a Catholic memorial.

Pope Francis has declared himself a "sinner" and said the Catholic Church will "fall like a house of cards" unless it is able to focus more on the "essentials" of preaching the Gospel and less on politics and bureaucracy.

A photo of the Pope posing with young fans at the Vatican has gone viral on social media, with gleeful reports that it was the first ever "Papal selfie".

The Vatican has asked Brazil for an additional €30 million ($49.5 million) to help cover an expected shortfall in funding for the visit of the Pope to Rio de Janeiro this month.

A Vatican official already under investigation in a purported money-laundering plot involving the Vatican bank was arrested yesterday in a separate operation.

Pope Francis has admitted for the first time that there is a "gay lobby" within the Curia, the powerful governing body of the Roman Catholic Church.

Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, has admitted the fear of scandal led to cover-up in the church over child abuse.

At yesterday's Palm Sunday service Pa Petera Tipene was causing a few of his female parishioners to run for the back ranks.

The day after his election, Francis eschewed the Vatican's armored limousine and traveled through the chaotic streets of Rome in an ordinary car to pick up his things at a downtown hotel.

As he walked on to the stage of the Vatican's vast Paul VI audience hall, Pope Francis was still wearing the white cassock, plain crucifix and black shoes that have characterised his fledgling papacy's pared-down aesthetic.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, was our new Pope. He took the name of Francis. In 2000 years there has never been a Pope Francis.

A genuinely secular state has no place in the finery and stresses of the weird and often wonderful ritual of a wedding, writes Toby Manhire.

White smoke has billowed from a Sistine Chapel chimney to show that a new pope has been elected to replace the frail Benedict XVI as leader of the world's 1.2 billon Catholics.

"I felt I had done my best for them, but I failed. I felt it was a tragedy I had tried to stop and didn't".

The 1888 Gothic revival presbytery beside St Patrick's Catholic Cathedral in Auckland CBD is an earthquake-prone building.

Yesterday was Pope Benedict's last day in office, but the words customarily used to announce that we have a new Pope, "Habemus Papam", are likely to be a long time in coming.

Three priests and a former priest in Scotland have reported the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, to the Vatican over allegations of inappropriate behaviour.