After a meeting with Pope Francis on a a farewell trip to Rome, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that the Catholic Church must let the truth come out it is to rebuild the trust of Christians the world over.

It is estimated that 216,000 children have been abused clerics in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s. The inquiry that unearthed the scale of the abuse could also lead the way to reforms within the church.

Thirteen couples competed in the North American Wife Carrying Championship on Sunday in Newry, Maine, in which husbands run a 278-yard (254 meters) obstacle-filled course carrying their wives, in hopes of winning the wife's weight in beer and five times her weight in cash. The winning couple, Jerome and Olivia Roehm, took home the prize for the third consecutive time. "This year it was a really tough. We went up, I think, higher than we've done in the past, so running up that hill was tough," said Jerome. In addition to the beer and cash, the two were entered into the world championship held in Finland next summer.  

After a scathing report that revealed the abuse of over 330,000 children over 70 years, the church said it will sell its real estate assets or take loans to compensate the victims.

The Catholic Church imposes drastic restrictions on those who serve it. Unlike monks, priests do not take a vow of chastity but are bound to celibacy and therefore total abstinence. Yet many priests have active sex lives and are in loving heterosexual or homosexual relationships. For this special full-length documentary, French priests and their partners agreed to speak out about their double lives.

Germany's largest Catholic diocese commissioned the independent report into years of abuse by clergy. The report names over 200 abusers and more than 300 victims. Two clergymen were immediately discharged.

Former Pope Benedict XVI has apologized for giving false testimony during a child sexual abuse probe. For many Catholics, the statement isn't enough; they are bitterly disappointed and demand an admission of guilt.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx has said he is still willing to step down in response to a damning report on decades of sexual abuse in his archdiocese. The cardinal once again asked victims for forgiveness, "personally and in the name of the diocese."

A priest who abused children and adolescents over many years has been handed a 12-year jail sentence by a Cologne court. The archdiocese where he worked has denied any responsibility.

More than 120 priests and employees of the Catholic Church in Germany have come out as queer and launched a campaign demanding an end to discrimination against LGBTQ people. DW met with one of them in Frankfurt.

At least 50 people were killed and others injured after gunmen attacked a Catholic church in Nigeria's Ondo state during mass on Sunday, a doctor and local media reported. A doctor at a hospital in Owo, a town in the state in Nigeria's southwest, told Reuters that no fewer than 50 bodies had been moved to the FMC (Federal Medical Center) in Owo and to St. Louis Catholic Hospital.

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