The pontiff has requested a debate over allowing married men in the Amazon region of Brazil to be ordained if they are men of great faith.

The pope made the decision following a request made by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the president of the Episcopal Commission for the Amazon, Il Messaggero newspaper reported a Vatican source as revealing.

However, Brenden Thompson from Catholic Voices UK told Premier the story is being “sensationalised”.

Speaking during News Hour, he added: “The pope is a pope. He’s Catholic – you don’t need to worry about that.

“The Pope has already himself said that he is in favour of celibacy and that celibacy has really, really, beautiful reasons practically and spiritually – why it’s a gift to the Church, but he is responding to the needs that have been said in Brazil.”

Cardinal Hummes reportedly asked Pope Francis to consider ordaining married men to tackle the issue of many remote communities in the Amazon where there is a shortage of priests.

Thompson said he wasn’t surprised by the Pope wanting the topic to be debated.

 
 
He told Premier: “We’ve become used to Pope Fracncis changing the way that we associate the Vatican and how it interacts with the churches around the world.

“So rather than starting the debate himself, actually it’s grassroots…because of the very specific situation in Brazil, have requested the Pope, and the Pope is a pope of dialogue and is saying, ‘yeah, let’s talk…

Christian Aid has taken a stand after a new ComRes poll found that 80 per cent of public agree it is morally wrong for banks to profit from investments that pollute the environment, while 77 per cent believe banks should be stopped from doing so.

Suzanne Ismail Christian Aid’s Senior Policy Advisor told Premier that it’s an urgent issue.

She said: “We need to act on climate change now. There’s really clear evidence to hear it’s really hurting the world’s poorest people.

“Fossil fuels are the biggest contributions, particularly through the energy sector.”

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who is also chair of Christian Aid, said: “This year we have seen extreme weather displacing millions of people in South Asia and bringing death and destruction in the Caribbean and the United States.

“These communities count the cost in lives lost.  But British investors, including banks, continue to count profits from just those fossil fuel investments that contribute to climate chaos.”

In light of the new poll numbers, Christian Aid has launched its “Big Shift” campaign.

The charity has contacted more than 25,000 CEOs of the big four high street banks asking them to move their investments out of fossil fuels.

It has also encouraged bank customers to email their banks and do the same.

Last week Barclays announced profit for the year to September of £3.4billion. Lloyds announced…

Mukhtar Masih, 70, along with his wife, children and grandchildren, were arrested in January following claims by local Muslims from the village of Lambanwali that Mr Masih had written blasphemous messages and pinned them to the door of a local mosque.

Mr Masih was charged and granted bail in May and the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) believed he “had a real chance of overturning his false charges”.

However, on Thursday, he was taken to Bagh Christian Hospital in Mansehra after complaining about abdominal pain and died later that day.

An autopsy declared death by gastro-intestinal bleeding.

The family have raised concerns that his premature death has left them vulnerable and despised by Muslims, despite their insistence that he is innocent.

Mehwish Bhatti, lead officer for the BPCA in Pakistan, said: “It is with great regret that I share this news as we were extremely confident that Mukhtar would be exonerated and that his reputation would once again become unsullied.

“His distraught family have expressed great disappointment that Mukhtar Masih died with charges of blasphemy over his head. We are challenging our local MP’s to call for a posthumous exoneration for a man who did not commit any crime.

“Mukhtar’s only offence was the hurt he apparently caused to Muslims for adhering to the Christian faith.”