Kirsten Grieshaber

A Jesuit priest says he prefers going to prison than paying a 500-euro ($541) fine for participating in a climate activists' street blockade in the southern German city of Nuremberg.

The Vatican has ordered an investigation into high-ranking Catholic clerics in Switzerland in connection with sexual abuse, the Swiss Bishops' Conference said on Sept. 10. The group said in a statement that there were allegations against several active and retired bishops as well as other clergy for their handling of abuse cases.

Pope Francis on March 25 accepted a resignation request from a German bishop who asked to step down because of his mistakes in handling sexual abuse cases.

An unprecedented crisis of confidence is shaking a historic center of Catholicism in Germany — the Archdiocese of Cologne. Catholic believers have protested their deeply divisive archbishop and are leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports.

A report commissioned by Germany’s Cologne archdiocese on church officials’ handling of past cases of sexual abuse found 75 cases in which high-ranking officials neglected their duties. The findings on Thursday prompted the archbishop of Hamburg to offer his resignation to Pope Francis.

Thousands of people in Berlin protested against anti-Semitism on Sunday, days after a man attacked a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.