Philip Pullella, Reuters

Pope Francis on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to the way the Roman Catholic Church deals with cases of sexual abuse of minors, abolishing the rule of "pontifical secrecy" that previously covered them.

The document also issues a strong defense for the protection of the environment in the Amazon, deforestation, illegal mining, and development projects that threaten native cultures and the delicate ecosystem vital for the planet.

Pope Francis ended his conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy on Sunday by calling for an "all-out battle" against a crime that should be "erased from the face of the earth." But victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.

Pope Francis denounced the "logic of armed power" in Yemen, Syria, and other Middle East wars on Monday on a landmark visit to the Arabian peninsula where Islam emerged, telling Christians and Muslims that conflicts brought nothing but misery and death.

Pope Francis said an open-air Mass before a huge crowd on Sunday to wrap up a jamboree of Catholic youth, the last big event before he returns to Rome to prepare for a historic trip to the Arabian Peninsula in one week. 

Pope Francis warned on Monday against a resurgence of nationalist and populist movements and criticized countries that try to solve the migration crisis with unilateral or isolationist actions.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington, D.C., the Vatican said on Friday, making him one of the most senior Catholic figures to step down in a worldwide sexual abuse crisis.

Pope Francis said on Tuesday as he wound up a trip to the Baltic states, all nervous about what they see as a newly aggressive Russia next door, that nations should not measure their strength by their military capability to prevail over others. "Some people speak in a loud voice, full of self-assurance – with no doubts or hesitation. Others shout and hurl threats about using weapons, deploying troops and implementing strategies...That way they appear to be stronger," he said in a homily of a Mass in the Estonian capital Tallinn.

The full extent of journalists' involvement in the statement — from conception and editing to translation and publication — emerges from a series of Reuters interviews that reveal a union of conservative clergy and media aimed at what papal defenders say is a campaign to weaken the reformist Francis's pontificate.