POPE FRANCIS

Nine churches have been firebombed in the past week, and scores of demonstrators were arrested during his first open-air mass in Santiago.

The Vatican pontiff's comments come in the wake of Hawaii false alarm over missile launch and North Korea scenario.

Catholic Church rocked by new sex abuse allegations as Sion bishop Jean-Marie Lovey apologises for clerical abuse by 10 paedophile priests in Switzerland.

The pope took particular aim at areas of global tension where President Donald Trump is playing a critical role.

Australian commission publishes report that finds "catastrophic failures" by Catholic Church to address child sex abuse allegations and calls on Vatican to overhaul celibacy rule.

The head of the Catholic church suggested that part of the Lord's Prayer was "not a good translation" and suggested it be changed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warns that Donald Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem Israel's capital will play into the hands of terror groups in Middle East.

Pope Francis joins world leaders in criticising US President Donald Trump's expected recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Pope Francis met a group of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and pronounced the word he had so assiduously avoided only days earlier in Myanmar.

Pope's comments mark his first public denunciation of the military's "persecution" of Rohingya Muslims.

In his first public Mass in Myanmar, Pope Francis urged the country's long-suffering ethnic minorities to resist the temptation to exact revenge for the hurt they have endured.

Islamic terror group Isis has unveiled a poster urging jihadists to attack the Vatican in the run up to Christmas.

The "will he or won't he?" issue has dominated debate before Francis' trip, which began Monday and ends with a youth rally in Dhaka on Dec. 2.

Rohingya Muslims live in segregated conditions in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are regarded as stateless people and unwelcome migrants from Bangladesh.

Pontiff said that drivers were faced with an "increasingly complex and tumultuous" life on the road.

The pontiff's car has a white paint job with gold racing stripes running from the hood to the back of the two-seater.

Isis has threatened 'Christmas blood' in a newly released poster depicting a masked jihadi driving a BMW full of explosives towards the Vatican.

The Pope got the keys to a fancy new Lamborghini but he won't be tooling around the Vatican gardens in it.

Pacific islands are expected to sink and erode by 2100 due to climate change, scientists warn. Baron Waqa discussed global warming and Paris Agreement with Pope Francis.

Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi's book Original Sin claims priests sexually abused teenage boys at a St. Pius X pre-seminary for middle- and high-schoolers in the Vatican.

Vatican spokesperson confirms cigarettes will no longer be sold at shop in city-state from 2018 because of their health hazards.