Vatican City - The Vatican's top health issues official reiterated Tuesday the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research - a field of study supported by US president-elect Barack Obama.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said stem cells taken from human embryos and involving the destruction of the embryos, "served no purpose with no health cure to date" resulting from such scientific research.

The Church instead championed research on adult stem cells that, Barragan said, have been shown to have "positive value."

Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI and the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Shaykh Mustafa Ceric, clasped hands and then hugged Thursday as the pontiff met participants at historic talks aimed at defusing tensions between Catholics and Muslims.

Vatican City - Roman Catholics "pray that God may enlighten" US president-elect Barack Obama so that he can successfully respond to the hope his election has generated, Pope Benedict XVI's spokesman said Wednesday.

Obama has raised expectations on "justice and finding appropriate ways to promote peace in the world," Father Federico Lombardi was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.

There was hope he would "favour human growth and dignity with respect to essential human and spiritual values," Lombardi said.

Vatican City - The Vatican ann

Vatican City - Top Roman Catholic and Muslim clerics and scholars began Tuesday historic talks in Rome aimed at defusing tensions between Christianity and Islam.

The talks are part of an initiative by moderate Muslim individuals and groups that began in the wake of the violent protests in the Islamic against the publication in a Danish newspaper in 2005 of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

Vatican City - In a new Vatican exhibition, Pope Pius XII's more mundane belongings - his heavily-worn shoes and portable typewriter - have gone on show, along with World War II-era radio transcripts in which he purportedly denounced totalitarian rule, including Nazism.

"The purpose is to allow the general public to get to know the full life of Pope Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII)," Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences President Walter Brandmueller, told reporters, Monday.

"In part it serves to counter some of the malign interpretations that try to cast a shadow on the figure of Pope Pacelli," he added.