The Religion and Ethics Report - Separate stories podcast ABC listen

The federal budget is in, and foreign aid funding has fallen well short of international targets. Catholic aid agency Caritas has asked for a doubling of the emergency aid fund, but did they get anything like what they sought?

In the past, the Vatican – and even a Pope – played a secret role in the development of artificial conception. And the vital ingredient was a basic human substance.

Each year, about two million people visit Auschwitz in Poland, and many of them are Jewish teenagers. But how young is too young to visit to the largest death camp of World War II?

In a timely warning, psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed says violence can be the darkest form of the search for belonging. What motivates a terrorist, from a psychological perspective?

Is Pope Francis a man of the left or a more cuddly version of a classic church conservative? Since the release of his latest statement on human dignity, both sides are claiming him.

The Vatican and the French government are in a major stand-off. It's over the question of whether the state can prevent the Church from sacking a nun.