In a letter ostensibly written to support the bishops of the US, Pope Francis has actually made life considerably more difficult for them. In his letter on the Trump administration’s immigration policies the Pontiff makes an argument that is poorly informed, easily rebutted, and likely to...

This week, with the publication of his new book, Pope Francis has added one important link to the chain of evidence regarding the fight against Vatican corruption. In April 2012, Pope Benedict created a special commission of three senior cardinals (Herranz, Tomko, and DeGiorgi) to investigate...

The Synod on Synodality—a project on which Pope Francis embarked in 2021, a project that spawned hundreds of meetings and thousands of pages of verbiage, a project that threatened to go on forever—has finally ended. Or has it? Officially the Synod closed on October 26, having...

It always happens this way: Less than a week after the election of a new Pope, Vatican journalists are confident (at least they tell us they are confident) that they know exactly what happened in the conclave. But there’s a problem with that claim. Everyone who was present in the Sistine...

Is there are a double standard for judging the behavior of Catholic bishops? Can liberal bishops push their own controversial ideas without fear of public rebuke, while their more conservative colleagues are shunned as “uncollegial” if they break with the general consensus? For an...

Many faithful Catholics were surprised and dismayed to learn that Pope Leo had met with Father James Martin, SJ, in a private audience last week. I share their dismay. But not their surprise. We all knew, from the moment he was elected, that Pope Leo XIV would not repudiate the policies of his...

Blame the Russians. Blame the Americans. Blame the Muslims. In a lengthy essay featured by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano Father (soon to be Cardinal) Timothy Radcliffe strives mightily to understand why so many African bishops resist accepting homosexuality. He has a few...

In more than 40 years of covering news of the Catholic Church, I have never encountered a Vatican story as wild as this one, nor one that is potentially—I stress, potentially—as revealing about the way the Vatican actually works. First bear in mind that this story involves the...

Throughout the Western world, Catholic Mass attendance has declined dramatically since Vatican II. That is an established fact. But did the Council—or its aftermath—cause the decline, or was the decline part of an overall cultural trend that the Council could not reverse? That question...

With a curious appointment this week, Pope Francis has shown how much he trusts an American prelate who is now one of the most powerful men at the Vatican. What was that appointment—which to date has escaped public notice? And why has the Pontiff placed so much confidence, and so much power,...