Sources: BBC
A barely legible letter to Pope Francis regarding the Vatican's financial scandals, which contained three bullets and is believed to have originated from France, is intercepted by postal workers in Peschiera Borromeo, near Milan. The letter is being treated by authorities as a possible death threat against Francis. 2021-08-9
Sri Lanka's GDP contracts 3.6% in 2020, its worst economic performance since gaining independence in 1948. 2021-04-30
Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop Richard Brendan Higgins, the episcopal vicar for veterans affairs of the Archdiocese for the Military Services. During his career, Bishop Higgins’ is vicar for veterans affairs and responsible for more than 200 chaplains serving at over 150 veterans' affairs hospitals in the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam. His retirement at age 75 is announced in Washington, D.C. by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States. 2021-01-2
The Two Popes film is released on Netflix just before the holiday season. It has a limited theatrical release during November in the United States and United Kingdom. Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis gives a dramatic interpretation of a series of conversations that took place between the liberal cardinal and the conservative incumbent Pope Benedict (played by Anthony Hopkins). 2019-12-20
Sri Lankan voters head to the polls to elect a new president. Although 35 candidates are running, the main frontrunners are former Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa of the right-wing Sri Lanka People's Front and current Minister of Housing and Construction Sajith Premadasa of the centre-right United National Party. 2019-11-16
Pope Francis criticizes naming the U.S. military's biggest non-nuclear explosive as the Mother of All Bombs, saying that the word "mother" should not be used in reference to a deadly weapon. 2017-05-6
Pope Francis, in an Apostolic Letter, done "Motu Proprio" (Latin: "On his own initiative"), creates the Secretariat for Communications, the second such Secretariat he has created, after the earlier Secretariat for the Economy, as part of a reform of the Roman Curia (Secretariats are the highest level of Curial dicastery, or department). It will incorporate Vatican Information Service (VIS), the News.va and Pope apps, the Vatican Television Center, the Vatican.va website and .va domain name, the L'Osservatore Romano newspaper, the Holy See Press Office, Vatican Radio, and the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He named the Reverend Monsignor Dario Edoardo Vigano, formerly the Vatican Television Center Director, as the first Prefect. 2015-06-27
Pope Francis venerates the purported remains of his first ever predecessor, as the Vatican gives a public display for what some claim are St Peter's remains. 2013-11-24
A top civil service union in Sri Lanka condemns the tying to a tree of an official by a government minister in Colombo, a disagreement related to dengue fever. 2010-08-3
Protesters try to enter the United Nations compound in Colombo, Sri Lanka, calling for the United Nations to abandon an inquiry into alleged human rights abuses in the final stages of the civil war between the government and Tamil rebels that ended last year. Staff are unable to leave until being assisted by Sri Lankan police. 2010-07-6