Alerts: Vatican

5/19/07, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them. Chavez, who regularly clashes with the Catholic Church in Venezuela but had not directly criticized the Pope before, accused the Pontiff on Friday of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas.

5/13/07, Pope Benedict XVI blamed Marxism and unbridled capitalism for Latin America's problems on Sunday, and urged bishops to mold a new generation of Roman Catholic leaders in politics to reverse the church's declining influence in the region.

5/11/07, “In an age so full of hedonism,” Benedict said the world needs clear souls and pure minds, adding: “It is necessary to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage.”

5/10/07, Pope Benedict XVI urged tens of thousands of young Catholics packing a soccer stadium Thursday to resist the temptations of wealth, power and other "snares of evil," and told them to promote life from "its beginning to natural end."

4/28/07, / The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences says there are seven "signs of the times" which cause concern for the future of international relations.

4/27/07, Pope Benedict XVI is planning to visit New York City for a trip to the United Nations headquarters.

4/15/07, Pope Benedict XVI marked his 80th birthday Sunday with a mass before thousands of worshippers in which he spoke of "darkness" threatening the world in the form of war, oppression and hate.