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Vatican buys soccer club
The players of Italian third division side Ancona will most likely think twice before misbehaving on the pitch after the club was bought by the Vatican.
La Stampa reported on Wednesday that the Centro Sportivo Italiano (CSI) has bought 80% of the club through a group of Milanese Catholic entrepreneurs, leaving 20% to the former president Sergio Schiavoni.
CSI, which is run by the Vatican's Conference of Bishops, has drafted an ethics code both for players and fans and will invest the profits in projects to help developing countries and Catholic youth in Italy.
"It is a way to moralize football, to bring some ethics to a sector that is going through a deep crisis of values," said Ancona archbishop Edoardo Menichelli, who recently played a benefit game against an Italian national team of singers.
- By Gus Leonisky at 6 Oct 2007 - 6:17am
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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Templars, torture and a mistake
The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages.
The book is based on a document known as the Chinon parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed.
The document is a record of the heresy hearings of the Templars before Pope Clement V in the 14th Century.
The official who found the paper says it exonerates the knights entirely.
Prof Barbara Frale, who stumbled across the parchment by mistake, says that it lays bare the rituals and ceremonies over which the Templars were accused of heresy.
In the hearings before Clement V, the knights reportedly admitted spitting on the cross, denying Jesus and kissing the lower back of the man proposing them during initiation ceremonies.
However, many of the confessions were obtained under torture and knights later recanted