Catholic World News

Nigeria, the world’s seventh most populous nation, “now almost totters on the brink” of disaster, the nation’s bishops warned in a statement entitled “To Rescue Nigeria from Collapse.” “What...

Vice President Joe Biden joined Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and political figures from both parties in paying tribute to Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as the president of the University of...

By margins of 145-2 in the state house and 29-0 in the state senate, Texas has passed legislation permitting public schools to display “a menorah or a Christmas image such as a nativity scene or...

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has declared May 24 to be a special day of prayer and penance “as a Christian response to the Kermit Gosnell trial and conviction.” “The recent trial and...

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, the chairman of the Committee on Migration of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, welcomed the Senate Judiciary Committee’s 13-5 vote in favor of...

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has asked Catholics to pray, fast, and abstain from meat on May 24 “for the conversion of all who support abortion, that Christ’s love may...

The Pontifical Lateran University has announced the establishment of a chair honoring the late Cardinal Bernardin Gantin. Cardinal Gantin, a native of Benin, was the first African-born cardinal...

Pope Francis has formally confirmed Cardinal Agostino Vallini as his vicar for the Rome diocese. Cardinal Vallini was named as vicar general of Rome by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008. As with all...

Pope Francis met on May 23 with El Salvador’s President Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena, for a conversation that highlighted the role of the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero in the life of the Central...

The Italian man who climbed out onto the dome of St. Peter’s basilica on Monday to dramatize a political protest climbed down Wednesday night. Marcello Di Finizio, who was protesting European...

The King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID), an organization established by Austria, Saudi Arabia, and Spain and named after Saudi...

“Angels and Saints at Ephesus,” a new album released by the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, has debuted at the top position on the Billboard traditional classical albums chart. “Advent...

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that an Arizona law banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional. In August, the court had blocked enforcement of the law. “We...

Amid intensified persecution of Protestant churches in recent years, authorities in the Iranian capital of Tehran have arrested Rev. Robert Asserian, pastor of the Central Assemblies of God...

Christians gathered in the Jordanian capital of Amman to pray for the release of the Greek Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox archbishops of Aleppo, who were kidnapped one month ago by Syrian rebel...

Pope Francis visited a home run by the Missionaries of Charity on Tuesday evening, offering “a heartfelt thank-you” to the sisters for their service to the poor. The Holy Father visited the Gift...

A young woman was arrested in Tunisia on May 19 after she spray-painted the name of a feminist group on the wall of a mosque. Amina Tyler was jailed when she wrote “Femen” on the exterior of a...

On May 22, Pope Francis reminded his weekly public audience that the coming Friday, May 24, would be the feast of Our Lady of Sheshan, the day set aside by Pope Benedict XVI for prayer for the...

In his homily at a daily Mass on Wednesday, May 22, Pope Francis warned against the impulse to exclude others, citing the words of Jesus that “he that is not against us is for us.” (Mk...

The Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (FIA) has released its first annual report, documenting the effort to tighten controls on financial transactions and to guard against money-laundering. During 2012 the FIA uncovered 6 suspicious financial transactions by Vatican officials or agencies. Two of those cases were forwarded to Vatican prosecutors for further investigation, and the other...

“Evangelization is the Church mission,” Pope Francis told his public audience on May 22. “Not just of a few, but my, your, our mission.” In a talk on the working of the Holy Spirit, the Pope said...

The Chicago province of the Society of Jesus has agreed to pay nearly $20 million to settle a lawsuit brought by men who were sexually abused by Donald McGuire, a former Jesuit who has been...

Less than a week after the Diocese of Kansas City, Missouri, reached a $600,000 settlement with the family of a girl involved in a child-porn case against a local priest, two other lawsuits have...

The Vatican Museums hosted a conference on May 21 devoted to the 1972 attack on Michelangelo’s Pietà and the sculpture’s subsequent restoration. On May 21, 1972, a mentally disturbed man...

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City expressed gratitude for prayers for the archdiocese and disaster victims following the tornadoes that ravaged parts of Oklahoma on May 19 and 20. “Our...

Following votes of 75-65 in the state house and 17-13 in the state senate, Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize assisted suicide. Oregon and Washington legalized the practice by ballot...

Residents of the Muslim village of Chak 30 attacked the Christian village of Chak 31 in the Pakistani province of Punjab after local Christians were accused of being disrespectful towards Islam....

The chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has invoked just-war criteria to question the moral legitimacy of the Obama...

A French man committed suicide inside Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on May 21. Dominique Venner, a 78-year-old historian and activist with a long history of involvement in traditionalist and...

The Vatican Museums are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the completion of restoration work on Michelangelo’s Pieta. The Pieta, which stands in the nave of St. Peter’s basilica, was badly...

Pope Francis offered a prayer for tornado victims in Oklahoma at his morning Mass on Tuesday, May 21. “Let us pray for the victims and those who are missing, especially children, affected by the...

"The struggle for power in the Church nothing new," Pope Francis told his congregation at a Mass in Domus Sanctae Marthae on May 21, referring to the Gospel account of disputes among the apostles...

Father Michael Fugee, the priest at the center of a scandal in the Newark, New Jersey archdiocese, faces a series of criminal charges for apparently violating a court order forbidding him from...

About 50 people demonstrated outside the grounds of Boston College on May 20 as the Jesuit institution conferred an honorary degree on Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny. Boston’s Cardinal Sean...

The Vatican was forced to deny that Pope Francis had performed an impromptu exorcism on Sunday, after reporters misinterpreted the Pontiff’s blessing of a sick man in St. Peter’s Square. After...

The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference has criticized “the deployment of the police flying squad and other elements of the security forces” and “the use of an air-force base by a...

The forced closure of several convents in eastern Libya preceded the recent bombing a parish there, according to Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, the apostolic vicar of Tripoli. “In Cyrenaica [eastern...

Questioning “the motive and the reasoning” behind support for regime change in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Libya, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church said that Islamic fundamentalist regimes are...

On May 15, Pope Francis sent a telegram to Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew traveled to the Italian city to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of...

In recent weeks, Islamist rebels who assumed power in the Central African Republic in March have kidnapped the rector of the cathedral in the nation’s capital as well as the archdiocesan...

The Vatican has introduced a ‘app’ for smartphones, providing a free news feed. The new app, called Missio, provides news headlines from Fides, the news service sponsored by the Congregation for...

An Italian man climbed out onto the dome of St. Peter’s basilica on Monday, May 20, in a dangerous political demonstration. Marcello Di Finizio unfurled a banner protesting new European Union...

A team of American seminarians has won the Clericus Cup, the annual soccer competition among Rome’s seminaries. The “North American Martyrs” took the championship for the 2nd consecutive year...

The Community of St. John has acknowledged that its founder, Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, had improper relations with women under his spiritual direction. Established by Father Philippe in...

Pro-family activists in Croatia have collected well over 200,000 signatures on a petition calling for a referendum to amend the country’s constitution and define marriage as a union between a man...

Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai has criticized the political leaders of Lebanon in unusually blunt terms, and said that they should address their own nation’s problems rather than “interfere in the...

Pope Francis recommended “courageous prayer” rather than “prayers of courtesy” in his homily at daily Mass on May 20. Commenting on the day’s Gospel, and the remark of Jesus that some demons can...

Father Adolfo Nicolas, the worldwide leader of the Jesuit order, has been named the president of the International Union of Superiors General (USIG), the umbrella group for representatives of men's...

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano called for a “firm and constant commitment” to battling prejudice against homosexuals, as Italy observed “Anti-Homopobia Day” on May 17. His statement was echoed...

Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, Australia, has admitted that Church leaders in the past did not respond adequately to sex-abuse complaints. The archbishop told a formal inquiry that “the...

A Catholic church was bombed in Benghazi, Libya, on May 17. Exploding in the nave of the church shortly before midnight, the bomb shattered several windows in the church itself and the adjacent...

Pope Francis met on May 18 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for a discussion of European political, economic, and especially religious affairs. A brief Vatican statement released after the...

Egypt’s Christian minority suffered two more violent assaults during the past week, with bombings at Coptic Orthodox churches in two different towns. A mob of Muslim militants attacked the church...

Questioned about the keys to successful evangelization, Pope Francis suggested that ecclesial movements should focus on three words: Jesus, prayer, and witness. The Holy Father took questions...

“God always brings newness—and demands our complete trust,” Pope Francis said in his homily at a Pentecost Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square. More than 200,000 people attended the morning Mass, which concluded a pilgrimage organized for ecclesial movements as part of the Year of Faith. In his homily the Pontiff spoke particularly of new movements and new developments in the Church, as...

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and three other Catholic organizations are asking Catholics to urge their senators “to support a Farm Bill that feeds hungry people, promotes...

At a conference commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan, in which Emperor Constantine decreed the toleration of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew...

The director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has praised the commitment of Pope Francis and the Church to ending hunger. “On a scale of 1 to 10, the Pope’s...

The Court of Appeals of the State of Kansas has ruled that civil courts cannot interfere in ecclesiastical annulment cases. A man filed suit against his ex-wife after he alleged she falsely...

The Vatican official who is helping oversee the revision of the chapter of the Code of Canon Law that deals with canonical penalties said in an interview that the current code was drafted during “a...

Catholic leaders in Indonesia are protesting the decision of an American foundation to honor the country’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for his contributions to inter-religious...

An American missionary priest in Kenya who became embroiled in a legal dispute over the ownership of hospitals has been suspended from the priesthood. The Maryknoll Society suspended Father...

The Vatican has released the public schedule of liturgical ceremonies at which Pope Francis will preside during the months of May, June, and July 2013. During the remaining days of May, the Pope...

About 40 Church officials participated in a May 16 conference at the Vatican on the challenges posed by new sects. The conference participants, drawn from different Vatican offices and pontifical...

The Manchester, New Hampshire diocese has agreed to pay $2,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a couple who charged that a priest had asked their son inappropriate questions during a sacramental...

Pope Francis met on May 17 with directors of the Pontifical Missionary Works (POM), and urged them to “keep evangelization, the paradigm of every act of the Church, alive.” The Pope said that POM...

After New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan told a radio interviewer that he has talked directly with Governor Andrew Cuomo about the latter’s standing in the Church, a spokesman for the archdiocese...

Italian police have arrested four suspected members of the internet hackers’ collaborative known as “Anonymous,” who are believed to be responsible for attacks on the internet sites of the Italian...

Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has protested that a proposed change in Ireland’s ban on abortion could lead to the death of unborn children who are capable of independent survival outside the...

“The problem is not that we are sinners,” Pope Francis told the congregation at his morning Mass on May 17. “The problem is not repenting of sin, not being ashamed of what we have done.” In his...

Addressing a recent United Nations Security Council discussion of terrorism in Africa, the Holy See’s leading representative at the UN recalled the recent terrorist attack on a Catholic church in...

Archbishops Vincent Nichols of Westminster and Peter Smith of Southwark are urging members of the House of Commons not to alter the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples. “We urge...

Addressing a UN meeting on human trafficking, a leading Vatican diplomat called upon the international community to take “concrete actions on the ground” against human trafficking and to “address...

A Syrian Catholic prelate has told the Fides news agency that “tolls” levied by rebels have increased the price of food “almost tenfold” in some areas of the country. “The militias of the Free...

Amid escalating violence committed by the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three states. Shortly after the...

As the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople visits Milan to celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan, Pope Francis has sent a message of greeting, hailing “the historic...

The Diocese of Kansas City, Missouri, has agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from child-pornography charges against a priest of the diocese. The family of a young girl whose...

A former accountant for the Archdiocese of St. Paul, Minnesota, has pleaded guilty to charges of embezzling $670,000 in archdiocesan funds. Scott Joseph Domeier, who worked for the archdiocese...

The Vatican’s representative at UN headquarters in New York has underlined “the grave concern with which the Holy See has been following the unceasing spiral of violence by which Syria has been...

Brazil’s top legal body has ruled that marriage licenses cannot be denied to same-sex couples. The ruling by the National Council of Justice makes Brazil the 3rd nation in Latin America to allow...

St. Paul exhibited a “healthy madness” that made him an effective evangelist, Pope Francis said in his homily at a Mass on May 16. "Paul is a nuisance,” the Pope told the congregation at the...

“We have started down the path of a disposable culture,” Pope Francis said in a May 16 address to four new ambassadors to the Holy See. In his remarks to the new envoys, the Pope spoke about injustice in the world economy, and especially in a socio-economic system in which “human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer goods which can be used and thrown away.” The Pope...

The chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities has issued a statement on the conviction of Kermit Gosnell, who had performed late-term abortions...

Following votes of 75-39 in the state house and 37-30 in the state senate, Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota has signed legislation altering the definition of marriage to include same-sex...

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, in conjunction with the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE), is commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan by hosting...

Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University have succeeded in cloning human embryos in order to obtain their stem cells, according to press reports. The researchers removed nuclei from...