There is a reason why progressives are so fond of Pope Francis: Caring for poor people has been the hallmark of his papacy, and a year and a half ago he said the Catholic church had become too "obsessed" with gay marriage, abortion and contraception.

This morning, for a brief, shining moment, CNN fat shamed the pope. Not even His Holiness is immune from an overly critical media that promotes an unrealistic papal body image. What next? Airbrushing cleavage on The Virgin Mary?

Philomena Lee, the woman behind the Oscar-nominated film Philomena, was granted an audience with Pope Francis earlier this week.

There's a rumor going 'round this fine morning that Miley Cyrus will use her hosting/musical guest privileges tonight on Saturday Night Live to escalate her feud with Sinéad O'Connor to DEFCON 6. This will most likely entail, explains the magpie contracted to spy on NBC's Studio 8H, a Weekend Update routine and…

Catholics who click on to the pope's Twitter feed on Catholic World Youth Day — a week-long event* that starts on July 22 — will gets an "indulgence", which is basically a get out of purgatory free card. The more you get, the faster you get the heck out of that hell-ish hole and straight up to the big dog's ice cream…

The rumors are true! Everyone's favorite pope, Pope John Paul II, will be declared a saint. Also jumping on the sainthood bandwagon is Pope John XXIII.

Yesterday, Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign from the papacy in over 600 years, sparking rumors that it was some sort of controversy that forced him to step down from the position. It's hard to imagine just how bad it could get for the Catholic church to hold one of their own responsible (what — did he say…

If you're monitoring your news feed today, you might get to watch Rev. Tony Flannery, a 66-year-old Irish Catholic priest with no threshold for doctrinal bullshit, throw down a serious gauntlet against the Vatican when he defies orders from Vatican authorities not to speak out about his advocacy for a more open-minded…

The beautiful mug of the most handsome Jesus wizard in the Vatican, Georg Ganswein, has graced the cover of Italy's Vanity Fair, proof either that the Catholic Church is trying to glamour Italians into becoming more religious, or that good-looking people really do have a professional leg-up on the rest of us uggos.

Women go topless to protest the Vatican's opposition to gay marriage in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. Police quickly took the women away, and the Pope appeared not to have been disturbed as he delivered his traditional prayer from his studio window overlooking the piazza. On their bare…

Everyone is expressing their excitement over 12/12/12 in different ways, whether it be by throwing 12/12/12 parties, updating their Facebook status or getting married. (I celebrated by hitting snooze 3 times and eating oatmeal.) Even Benedict XVI, the pope himself, is excited. Why else would he use today to send out…

I think we'd all like to believe that, sitting next to a reading lamp and swaddled in his Holy Snuggie somewhere deep inside the Vatican's intestinal labyrinths, Pope Benedict Palpatine Vader XVI read The Casual Vacancy with a mounting sense of disappointment that Harry Potter didn't make at least a cameo appearance.…

These days, we can blog and tweet when we're pissed about the patriarchy. But back in 1937, Florence O'Donnell Maher couldn't use social media to vent about how angry she was at the Pope for telling women not to use birth control. So she wrote him an amazing poem. "She had 10 children so she knew what was up," adds…

Catholicism is well known for its opposition to contraception, but some women within the church are attempting to paint the church's stance on birth control as freeing rather than restrictive. How are they going to pull that off? By promoting natural family planning as an accepted Catholic practice for avoiding…

Yesterday, a cranky 84-year-old man, tired from a "grueling" trip, delivered a stern diatribe against gender equality based solely on an irrational, antiquated tradition. Why do we care? Because that man is Pope Benedict XVI, so what he says goes for millions of Catholics, and he's laying down the law: women must…

Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithful as Mexico's first lady Margarita Zavala, left, applauds, at a welcome ceremony after his arrival in Silao, Mexico, Friday March 23, 2012. Benedict's weeklong trip to Mexico and Cuba is his first to both countries. He has called for an end to the violence in Mexico. (AP…

Pope Benedict XVI responded to the decades of scandals over clergy abusing children today in front of visiting U.S. bishops. He says: