The Vatican official responsible for links with other churches, theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper, has rejected suggestions of a "standstill" in the search for Christian unity.

Pope Benedict XVI announced plans to allow provisions that would accept groups of former Anglicans who wish to convert to the Roman Catholic Church, according to a statement from the Vatican.

The Vatican's representative at the United Nations has shocked listeners by suggesting that there could be more child abuse within Protestant and Jewish communities than in the Roman Catholic Church.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a Catholic convert, has said that the Vatican should rethink its negative and "entrenched" attitudes towards homosexuality.

Concerned Catholics have launched a petition calling on the Church to consolidate the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, after recent papal actions that seem to point in a different direction.

Secularist campaigners will be marching to the Italian Embassy in London today, in a demonstration coinciding with one in Rome against the Vatican's interventions in Italian, European and global politics.

The New York-based International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) has welcomed the Vatican's call for a Holocaust denying renegade bishop to disown his reported views.

Following vast international pressure and condemnation, including a sharp riposte from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Vatican says it is asking a Holocaust-denying bishop to publicly recant

The Vatican sought to up its green credentials this week by switching on its massive electricity generating solar panels on the Pope Paul VI Hall. The development is one of a series of intended environmental initiatives.

It caused international uproar at the time, but the Vatican has now seen the tongue-in-cheek side of the late John Lennon's 1966 claim that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus".