A month and a day after now Emiritus Pope Benedict XVI abdicated, 115 cardinals from around the world are set to find a new pope, but unlike in 2005 there is no clear frontrunner to become the new leader of the Catholic Church.
Britain’s most senior Catholic minister, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has resigned his position as Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh following allegations of inappropriate behaviour against priests from the 1980s.
Pope Benedict XVI has announced that he is to resign at the end of this month, saying that he is too old to continue at the age of 85, becoming the first Pope to volunteer his resignation in recent times.
As opponents of the Assad regime scramble from one foreign capital to another, trying to secure funding for weapons and aid to help Syrians in need, some prominent religious leaders are sitting on the sidelines, quietly organizing themselves to provide spiritual guidance after the bloodshed ends.
Some armed opposition forces appear to have deliberately destroyed a number of religious sites in mixed areas of Northern Syria. Opposition leaders have pledged to protect all Syrians, but this is proving more difficult in practice.