Catholic World News
Stories for week of July 01, 2012
Released Monday, Jul. 2
Pope Benedict XVI has named Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg, Germany to become prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican’s key doctrinal...
At his public audience on Sunday, July 1, Pope Benedict XVI remarked that the miracles of Jesus involve spiritual as well as physical healing. The day’s Gospel reading, which recounted the...
Pope Benedict XVI will leave the Vatican on July 3 for his annual summer stay at the apostolic palace in Castel Gandolfo. With a flurry of appointments to the Roman Curia in the past week, the...
Pope Benedict XVI has named the presidents delegate who will lead the discussions of the Synod of Bishops in October 2012. The presidents delegate are Cardinals John Tong Hon of Hong Kong;...
In a lengthy and revealing interview with the National Catholic Register, Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, the newly appointed vice president of the Ecclesia Dei commission, offers some revealing...
Pope Benedict XVI plans a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Loreto in October, as part of his preparation for the October meeting of the Synod of Bishops. Loreto’s Archbishop Giovanni Tonucci revealed...
For the 4th time in just over one year, Pope Benedict XVI has forced a bishop from office. The Vatican announced on July 2 that the Pope had removed Archbishop Robert Bezak from his post as head...
Among the Catholic chaplains at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games will be Father Geoff Hilton of the Diocese of Salford, England: a priest who has an impressive record of personal involvement in...
At least 17 people were killed, and many others seriously wounded, in an armed assault on a Christian church in Garissa, Kenya, on July 1. Armed men killed two guards, then threw grenades into...
The UN’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated the Nativity basilica in Bethlehem as a World Heritage site. The UNESCO decision, reached on a secret ballot,...
Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to Holocaust victims, has changed its description of Pope Pius XII, acknowledging the work of historians who have demonstrated the wartime Pontiff’s efforts to save...
Brazil, the country with the world’s largest Catholic population, has seen a dramatic slip in the proportion of residents who identify themselves as Catholics, the latest census shows. In the...
Released Tuesday, Jul. 3
Dawn Stefanowicz, a Canadian author raised by an actively homosexual father, discussed her experiences in a recent interview with Catholic World Report. “Our identity, security, and sense of...
The Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film Festival is taking place in Rome from July 2-5. The festival, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for...
Over 50 scholars and prelates, including 10 cardinals, gathered at the Vatican from June 29 to July 1 for the twelfth plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The topic of...
Fourteen nuns associated with the lobbying group Network have concluded a nine-state bus tour in protest of the House budget plan. The tour, which attracted considerable media attention, concluded...
The former chief financial officer of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia pled guilty on June 29 to embezzling $906,000 from the archdiocese between 2004 and 2011. Anita Guzzardi, 43, will be sentenced...
The number of test-tube babies in the world has reached 5 million, according to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). About 350,000 babies are conceived through...
The Vatican has released the full schedule for the September 14-16 visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Lebanon, where he will release his apostolic exhortation concluding the work of the Synod for the...
Archbishop Gerhard Müller, the newly appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was instrumental in cutting of Church funding for dissident groups in Germany, the LifeSite...
At MercatorNet, Michael Cook recalls the history of Otto von Bismarck’s effort to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church in Germany, and notes that the effort ultimately failed. Repression,...
For the feast of St. Benedict, maestro Daniel Barenboim will conduct a concert by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the summer residence of Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. The...
Police in Colorado are investigating a violent attack on the home of a pro-life leader. Keith Mason, the head of Personhood USA, was alarmed last week when vandals threw a rock through a window...
Prince Alois of Liechtenstein won a solid electoral victory when 65% of the little country’s voters opposed a referendum that would have ended his legislative veto power. Only 15% of Lichtenstein’s...
A gang attack on Vietnamese Catholics during Sunday Mass was instigated by government officials, local Catholics told the AsiaNews service. A Mass in Con Cuong was disrupted by the gang, and...
Released Wednesday, Jul. 4
In one of the first efforts of Catholics Voices USA—a “media-friendly and studio-ready” lay initiative that seeks to “put the Church's case in the public square”-- Melissa Moschella argues in the...
Describing the Muslim shrines and tombs of Timbuktu as “un-Islamic,” members of the radical Islamist group Ansar Dine (“Defenders of the Faith”) are destroying much of the ancient city’s...
The bishops of the southern African nation of Zimbabwe have issued a pastoral letter to emigrants who have left the troubled nation, which Robert Mugabe has ruled since 1980. “As the fabric of...
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has promulgated the first liturgical texts for personal ordinariates of former Anglicans who have been received into full...
Noting that “the appointment of bishops is not a political but religious matter,” the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples is warning that Father Joseph Yue Fusheng will incur automatic...
Pope Benedict XVI has strongly signaled his support for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a highly unusual gesture clearly designed to end speculation that the Secretary of State might be replaced. ...
After studying the Shroud of Turin, the Italian scientist Giuseppe Baldacchini has reached the same conclusion as many others: the theory that it is a medieval forgery requires more leaps of faith...
Speaking to a conference of religious in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the prefect of the Congregation for Evangelization paid tribute to the religious men and women who “played a historic role...
Pope Benedict XVI has begun his summer vacation, at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo. The Holy Father—who, earlier in his pontificate, took short summer vacations in the Italian Alps—has...
Real freedom isn’t something Caesar can give or take away. He can interfere with it; but when he does, he steals from his own legitimacy. At a July 4 Mass at the basilica of the National Shrine...
Released Thursday, Jul. 5
An Austrian organization strongly critical of Church teaching is criticizing Pope Benedict’s appointment of the bishop of Regensburg as the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the...
Ireland’s deputy prime minister is calling upon the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. “I believe in gay marriage,” said Eamon Gilmore, who also serves as minister for foreign affairs and...
The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University has examined the link between sacramental practice and belief in heaven and hell. The Center found that 25% of...
A federal district court judge has ruled that New York City public schools cannot discriminate against churches in permitting outside organizations to use school property outside school...
An Iranian appeals court has affirmed the six-year prison sentence of Farshid Fathi Malayeri, a Protestant pastor convicted of administering funds for foreign organizations. “Pastor Fathi...
In an interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna responds to the criticism he has received for allowing an avowed homosexual to sit on a parish council, traveling to...
The Holy See ran a deficit of nearly €15 million ($18.6 million) in 2011, the largest shortfall in recent years. After posting a surplus of €9.8 million in 2010, the Vatican budget showed the...
European banking inspectors have completed their report on the Vatican’s financial procedures, although the contents of that report will not be made public for a month. Inspectors from the...
In a BBC report on the decision facing the Church of England—whether or not to allow the ordination of women as bishops—Robert Pigott provides a generally accurate summary of the arguments....
A Philadelphia judge has refused to allow Msgr. William Lynn to be kept under house arrest pending his sentencing, saying that he must remain in prison. After Msgr. Lynn, a former Philadelphia...
The economic practices of colonialism are still in evidence in Brazil’s resource-rich Amazon region, a Catholic bishop complained at a July 3 conference. Bishop Jesus Maria Berdonces of Cameta...
After the Vatican warned that Chinese prelates would be excommunicated if they participated in the illicit ordination of a bishop on July 6, the Beijing government condemned the statement from Rome...
Reacting to a massacre at a Christian church in Garissa, Kenya, a group of local Muslim leaders have promised to recruit volunteers to guard other Christian churches. Adan Wachu, who heads the...
Released Friday, Jul. 6
A month after Feng Jianmei, a woman seventh months pregnant, was forced to undergo an abortion in China, the European Parliament has passed a resolution condemning “the practice of forced abortions...
A federal appeals court has ruled that Baltimore’s mayor and city council infringed upon constitutional free speech rights in compelling crisis pregnancy centers to post signs stating that they “do...
Writing for L’Osservatore Romano, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the Holy See described the role of an Anglican choir at the June 29 papal Mass as an instance of “ecumenism in action.” “While...
Continuing his pastoral visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—a nation whose conflicts have claimed over five million lives since 1995—the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization...
A Seattle court has ruled that the Oblates of Mary Immaculate must pay $6.4 million to a 65-year-old man who said he was abused by a lay teacher at the school between 1961 and 1964. The teacher, who...
Two years after a man entered a retirement home and beat a Jesuit priest he says abused him, a California jury has ruled that the man is not guilty of felony assault and elder abuse. Father Jerold...
Authorities in Northern Ireland have announced plans for a new investigation into the “Bloody Sunday” killings of January 30, 1972. An earlier investigation concluded that police had opened fire...
A prized 12th-century guide for pilgrims has been returned to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, one year after it was stolen. The illustrated manuscript known as the Codex...
Scientists’ discovery of the Higgs boson, sometimes known as the “God particle,” should not detract from belief in God, an official of the Vatican Observatory told a Vatican Radio audience. The...
In Catholic World Report, Anthony Esolen laments that many hymns sung in Catholic churches combine bad music with worse poetry. Those who read this piece can choose between being depressed to learn...
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has restored 4 priests to active ministry, after lengthy investigations into sex-abuse charges produced no substantial evidence against them. The archdiocese...
A Vatican representative has told the UN’s Human Rights Council that many nations are failing to honor their professed commitment to religious freedom. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s...
About half of the world’s episcopal conferences have established policies for handling abuse problems, the Vatican top’s sex-abuse prosecutor told the Italian monthly Jesus. Msgr. Charles...
A Catholic parents’ group in Ontario is urging administrators of Catholic schools to resist a new government policy that requires administrators to approve the formation of “gay-straight alliance”...
Defying a warning from the Vatican, Chinese officials ordained a new bishop for the Harbin diocese without approval from the Holy See. Bishop Joseph Yue Fusheng, a vice-president of the...
Earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI released a letter of support to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, most observers saw the gesture as a signal from the Pope that the Secretary of State would remain in...
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