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A Czech parish priest who tried to enter the Vatican on Sunday carrying an air pistol, two knives and a screwdriver in his bag was detained by the police, Italian media reports. He was accompanying a group of pilgrims from Czechia but was apprehended during the security checks visitors are required to go through in order to enter the Vatican. The bag in which the police found the suspicious items allegedly belonged to someone else from the party, who is also being prosecuted for illegally arming the clergyman.

During interrogation, the priest claimed that the weapons were only intended for self-defence, a story which, according to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, investigators do not find credible. The current theory is that the man may have entrusted the bag to the priest thinking that he would not be subjected to a thorough security check due to his ecclesiastical status.

Coach Radim Rulík presented the Czech national team's roster on Sunday night for the Ice Hockey World Championships that begin in Czechia this Friday. The 26 players on the roster, made up of three goaltenders, eight defenders and fifteen forwards, include nine NHL players. The most experienced player on the team is 38-year-old Roman Červenka, who has 10 world championships under his belt and was on the winning Czech team in 2010.

The team will start training in Prague on Tuesday for its first game at the championships on Friday against Finland. Last week, the Czech team lost all three games in the Czech Hockey Games, the final tournament of the Euro Hockey Tour series, including against Finland, which won the tournament.

The Prague-based pro-Russian media site Voice of Europe will be included in the EU's 14th sanctions package against Russia over its war on Ukraine, Vice-President of the European Commission Věra Jourová said on Czech Television on Sunday. The Czech government added the organisation to its national sanctions list at the end of March after the Czech counterintelligence agency, BIS, discovered that it was attempting to influence the European Parliament elections by bribing far-right politicians in countries such as Germany, Belgium and France. Ms. Jourová said that the EU regards Voice of Europe not as a real media platform but rather an instrument for Kremlin propaganda.

Czechia is also trying to get the two individuals associated with the site, Artem Marchevsky and Viktor Medvedchuk, on the EU sanctions list, but the commissioner said she doesn't know yet if that will happen.

Deputy Mayor of Prague Zdeněk Hřib plans to propose to the city council on Monday that the bronze wall sculpture with the inscription "Moscow-Prague", located in the Czech capital's Anděl metro station, be removed or modified. The deputy mayor wrote on social media site X on Sunday that it was "high time" for something to be done about the controversial sculpture, given the Soviet Union's occupation of Czechoslovakia at the time that the station was commissioned and Russia's similar behaviour now towards Ukraine.

The sculpture pays tribute to the Soviet engineers who helped with the construction of the Prague metro and who played a significant role in the design of the station, which was formerly called "Moskevská" when it opened in 1985. It got its current name, Anděl, not long after the fall of the communist regime, in February 1990, but the sculpture remained even though the station has been reconstructed several times since.