"However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal. To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise."

Whatever else it tells us, the cardinal's statement does sit uneasily with his years of outspoken denunciation of homosexual relationships. He has been an outspoken opponent of plans to legalise same-sex marriage in Scotland and was named "bigot of the year" by gay rights charity Stonewall last year.

In an interview with BBC Scotland shortly before the allegations against him were made public, the cardinal said he believed priests should be able to marry and have children if they wished. He said it was clear many priests struggled to cope with celibacy.

"And Germany’s rise to become the largest economic power in the heart of the continent after reunification has aroused the fears of many people. I am shocked at how quickly perceptions became distorted, as if today’s Germany was continuing in the tradition of German great power politics, or even German crimes. It is not only populist parties which are even portraying the German Chancellor as the representative of a state which, just like in former times, supposedly wants to enforce a German Europe and oppress other peoples."

"I want to assure all citizens of neighbouring countries that I cannot imagine any of Germany’s policymakers seeking to impose a German diktat. Until now, our society has proved to be rational and mature. In Germany – and I am grateful for this – no populist, nationalist party has won enough support among the population to gain any seats in the German Bundestag. It is my heartfelt conviction that in Germany more Europe does not mean a German Europe. For us, more Europe means a European Germany!"

"We do not want to intimidate others, nor force our ideas on them. However, we stand by our experience and would like to pass it on to others."

Italian officials say the Bank of Italy’s governor Ignazio Visco is front-runner to take over as premier despite warnings that this will be seen as an elitist ploy. It is far from clear whether the Democrats (Pd) in charge of the lower house will back the idea.

The plans amount to a near replica of the outgoing team of Mario Monti, though one greatly weakened by the earthquake upset in the elections a week ago. Almost 57 percent of the vote went to groups that vowed to tear up the EU-imposed austerity agenda. Stefano Fassina, the Pd economics chief, said his party is vehemently opposed to “any form of technocrat government, new or old”, insisting that the election result must be respected. Mr Fassina said 90 percent of the country had rejected the Monti agenda and warned that it would be a grave error to try to force through the same reviled plans a second time.

Comedian Beppe Grillo repeated his vow to “bring down the old system” and dismissed the latest talks as cattle market trading by a depraved political class trying to circumvent the will of the people. “I repeat for the umpteenth time, the Five Star Movement will not back any government. It will vote law by law in keeping with its platform,” he said.

Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos was a career diplomat with the Greek foreign ministry. Last year, he entered the private sector, and now feels free to speak openly about his fury at what he says Europe and international lenders are doing to his country.

“At a certain moment, quite soon, there will be an explosion of social unrest. It will be very unpleasant,” he says, referring to 15 armed incidents in the previous ten days. In the past few weeks, offices of the governing parties have been firebombed as well as the homes of pro-government journalists. The headquarters of the prime minister's conservative New Democracy party was machine-gunned, and days later a bomb exploded at a shopping mall belonging to the country's second wealthiest citizen, although no one has been badly injured by the attacks.

“It is an escalation of activities,” he worries, adding that he expects the "explosion" to occur sooner rather than later. He predicts the spark will be when new, retroactive and sizeable tax bills come due in the coming months that people simply cannot pay. “There will be further increases in armed actions. There will be bloody demonstrations.”

“These actions are condemnable, of course, but I feel that this sort of armed activity will increase as long as the government continues to impose oppressive measures against the Greek people.”

Mr Obama hasn’t confirmed a visit to the Temple Mount. But Muslim leaders have heard rumors and have issued a blunt statement nonetheless, The Times of Israel reports.

Hamas said a visit by Mr Obama to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is located just on the southern side of the Mount, would be “an imminent danger which the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem have never faced,” according to The Times of Israel. Hamas — which has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department since 1997 — also called any visit by Mr Obama to the site of “the Zionist occupation” an act of danger.

Ekrima Sabri, who heads the High Islamic Council in Jerusalem, said his group “insists on Muslim sovereignty over the Temple Mount,” according to The Times of Israel report.

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust. The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

Dr Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time. "You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, Prisoner Of War camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."

We’ve heard about the so-called papal ‘resignation’ almost 600 years ago. But there wasn’t one. There were three rival Popes back then, and one of them was a psychopath. They were sacked by a council of all the bishops and cardinals to get back to one Pope at a time. Since then, every Pope has died in office.

Resignation isn’t in Benedict’s vocabulary. The real reason he has quit is far more spectacular. It is to save the Catholic Church from ignominy: he has voluntarily delivered himself up as a sacrificial lamb to purge the Church of what he calls ‘The Filth’. And it must have taken courage. Here is the remarkable thing you are seldom told about a papal death or resignation: every one of the senior office-holders in the Vatican – those at the highest level of its internal bureaucracy, called the Curia – loses his job.

A report Benedict himself commissioned into the state of the Curia landed on his desk in January. It revealed that ‘The Filth’ – or more specifically, the paedophile priest scandal – had entered the bureaucracy.

He is too old, and too implicated, to clean it up himself. He has resigned to make way for a younger, more dynamic successor, untainted by scandal – and a similarly recast Curia.

Benedict was not prepared to wait for his own death to sweep out the gang who run the place. In one extraordinary gesture, by resigning, he gets rid of the lot of them. But what then? The Curia are usually quickly reappointed. This time it may be different. It involves scores of departments, like the civil service of a middling-sized country.

In the Observer, which first reported the story last week, the former priest, who remains anonymous, today said he had been 'disappointed' by the church's reaction.

He said: 'There have been two sensations for me this week. One is feeling the hot breath of the media on the back of my neck and the other is sensing the cold disapproval of the church hierarchy for daring to break ranks. I feel like if they could crush me, they would.'

'The vacuum the church has created has allowed whimsy and speculation to distort the truth, and the only support I have been offered is a cursory email with a couple of telephone numbers of counsellors hundreds of miles away from me.'