Rome - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday visited Rome's city hall and appealed to the Italian capital's citizens to show tolerance and be more welcoming towards foreign immigrants.

Benedict's visit, the first by a pontiff in over a decade, came amid tensions in Rome and neighbouring areas involving Romanian immigrants as well as ethnic Roma living in shanty towns and camps around the city.

Rome  - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday officially announced the dates for his p

Rome - Pope Benedict XVI, during his expected visit to the Holy Land in May, is not scheduled to enter an Israeli Holocaust museum which contains a controversial caption on wartime pope Pius XII, Israel's Vatican envoy said Friday.

Ambassador Mordechay Lewy referred to the pontiff's trip during a conference in Rome on Jerusalem's holy sites, the ANSA news agency reported.

The Vatican has yet to confirm the pontiff's visit to the Holy Land which is likely to include visits to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Vatican City  - Pope Benedict XVI recalling Sunday how angels had helped Jesus spurn the Devil, urged the faithful to pray that he and his Vatican aides may also be "watched over" by the traditionally winged beings.

The pontiff in his midday Angelus message, referred to the Gospel of St Mark story, in which Jesus spends 40 days in the desert and rejects several gifts and offers made to him by Satan.

"Almost fleetingly, in this brief account, the angels appear luminous and mysterious before the dark figure who dares tempt the Lord (Jesus)," Benedict told thousands gathered in St Peter's Square.

Vatican City - In 2007 Roman Catholics numbered 1.147 billion people, or some 17.3 per cent of the global population, the Vatican said Saturday in its latest report on church statistics.

The total, which relates to the number of people baptized as Catholics, marks a 1.4 per cent increase over the previous year and is "in tune" with global population growth of 1.1 per cent during the same period, the Vatican noted.

The annual report, published in the form of a thick hard-cover book, was presented to Pope Benedict XVI in a ceremony at the Vatican on the Saturday morning.

Tubingen, Germany - The Catholic church was under the increasing threat to deteriorate into a sect under the rule of Pope Benedict XVI, a leading progressive theologian said.

Father Hans Kung, an emeritus professor of ecumenical theology at the University of Tubingen in southern Germany, said he was "very sad" over the direction where the current church leadership was heading.

Remarks by Kung that the Catholic church under the current pope risked becoming a sect triggered fierce criticism by the Vatican.