VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has released a new Arabic-language guidebook, the first of its kind, which aims to bring the culture of the Catholic Church to a new audience.

VATICAN CITY - Despite worries about the impact of millions of tourists on Michelangelo’s precious frescoes, the Sistine Chapel is opening its doors for the first time to a new kind of tourist to support Pope Francis’ charities.

On the way out of Manger Square, down a steep drive and onto the commercial street, a woman in fashionable trekker gear with a $1,000 Canon digital SLR slung from her shoulder pulls out her phone and aims the little plastic lens at the street generally. You have seen pictures like the one she has just taken — slightly skewed vistas of a lot of pavement and distant pedestrians and colourful street signs and maybe the hood of a passing car.