In a statement, Francis’s nine cardinal advisers expressed their “full solidarity” with the Pope over the scandal which has thrown his papacy into crisis.

The cardinals, who are meeting at the Vatican this week, said they were aware that “the Holy See is working on formulating the potential and necessary clarifications”.

Francis has refused to respond to an 11-page document published on August 26 by a retired ambassador to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.

Mr Vigano named more than two dozen current and former Vatican and US officials and accused them of knowing about and covering up for ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who is accused of sexually molesting and harassing minors as well as adults.

Mr Vigano accused Francis of rehabilitating McCarrick from canonical sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 or 2010.

The Vatican has known since at least 2000 that McCarrick slept with seminarians.

Francis removed McCarrick as cardinal in July following accusations that he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s, a canonical crime that could result in him being defrocked.

Francis’s refusal to immediately respond to Mr Vigano’s claims has frustrated many Catholics in the US, who were already outraged that McCarrick’s penchant for seminarians and young priests was apparently an open secret in some church circles.

That outrage has been compounded by the…

The overloaded commercial plane crashed into a lake in Yirol.

The 19-seater commercial Baby Air plane had been travelling from the capital, Juba, the minister of information for the town of Yirol, Taban Abel Aguek, told The Associated Press.

Officials are investigating the cause of the crash.

According to the Anglican Communoin News Service, the Primate of South Sudan, Archbishop Justin Badi Arama, said: “Mama Joyce and I are saddened to hear of the plane crash in Yirol this morning, which has claimed the lives of a number of people, including the ECSS Bishop of Yirol, Rt Revd Simon Adut Yuang.

“Bishop Simon was an energetic young man and is a loss to the Episcopal Church of South Sudan. Please join us in praying for the families and friends of all involved in the accident.

“Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”

The three survivors of the crash are a six-year-old child, an adult man and an Italian doctor with an aid organisation who was in surgery and in serious condition, Mr Aguek said.

“There were people everywhere,” the minister said of the crash site.

Bishop Simon was consecrated in May 2015. He leaves behind a wife and six children.

Stay up to date with the latest news stories from a Christian perspective. Sign up to our daily newsletter and receive more stories like this straight…

Rt Rev Rachel Treweek is expected to call for a review of short prison sentences and ask that the Government considers community based orders and rehabilitation for women with less serious offences.

She said in a statement: “We know that women in the justice system get caught in the so-called revolving door with short prison sentences. Women lose their homes; they often lose custody of their children, even to adoption. This often then exacerbates the downward spiral into more serious offences and an inability to secure employment.

“Properly resourced women’s centres can provide an opportunity for a different path, where women can receive a holistic trauma-informed approach of rehabilitation.”

Bishop Rachel said a review of the women’s justice system could lead to a more cost-effective solution.

“We know that it costs approximately £47,000 per year to keep a woman in prison, but women’s centres can work effectively with approximately £4,000 per woman each year,” she said.

The bishop also highlighted that female offenders are very often victims of abuse.

“According to the excellent organisation ‘Women in Prison’ 53 per cent of women in prison have experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse during childhood; 46 per cent report suffering domestic abuse violence; and over 30% spent time in local authority care as a child,” she said.

“As a…

The call in the House of Lords for action came after a report found monks at Ampleforth in North Yorkshire and Downside in Somerset hid allegations of “appalling sexual abuse” against pupils as young as seven to protect the church’s reputation.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) also said the abuse spanning four decades was likely to be “considerably” more widespread than previously thought.

It made the claims in a scathing report on the English Benedictine Congregation, which has 10 monasteries in England and Wales.

Ampleforth and Downside are two schools linked to the monasteries, run at times by “secretive, evasive and suspicious” church officials who avoided reporting misconduct to police and social services.

Allegations stretching back to the 1960s encompassed “a wide spectrum of physical abuse, much of which had sadistic and sexual overtones”, according to the report.

Ten individuals linked to the schools, mainly monks, have been cautioned or convicted over sexual activity or pornography offences involving a “large number of children”.

Raising the scandal in the Lords, Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Walmsley said: “Is the Minister aware that the committee had evidence that one of the schools consulted its legal adviser as to whether it was legally obliged to report the abuse that it knew about. Having learned that it was not so obliged, it…