Pope Francis has sent one of his top sex crimes investigators to Bolivia at a time when the Andean nation is being shaken by an escalating pedophilia scandal involving priests.

The help Father Beotti “offered to many Jewish people persecuted by the Nazi-Fascists played a decisive role” in his death, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

Pope Francis will travel to Portugal for World Youth Day in the first week of August and include a stop at the popular Marian shrine in Fatima, the Vatican confirmed.

Debt ceiling negotiations are rankling some Catholic leaders.

The Catholic Church played a major role in bringing tobacco to Italy, which is still the number one producer of raw tobacco in the European Union today.

The Vatican said the driver was about 40 years old and was in a “serious state of psychophysical alteration."