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An Italian newspaper has printed leaked documents detailing the spending of the new Secretariat for the Economy, in an obvious effort to discredit the work of the powerful new Vatican office. The...
A Vatican spokesman has denied reports that the Office of the Synod intercepted books that had been mailed to bishops participating in the October meeting of the Synod of Bishops. “I can deny...
Bishop Bernt Eidsvig of Oslo is under investigation for complicity in fraud after he admitted that his diocese used telephone directories to estimate the number of Catholics and thus receive...
A Jesuit priest who was released this week after 8 months of captivity in Afghanistan has disclosed that his kidnappers told him he would be killed if he was seen in Afghanistan again. Father...
77% of the world’s population lives under “high or very high” restrictions on religion—up from 68% in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center. The report also found that “Christians were...
Pope Francis and the members of the Roman Curia have concluded their annual Lenten retreat. In his brief remarks at the retreat’s conclusion, the Pontiff thanked the retreat master, Father Bruno...
Revising a 1912 law on Islam, the Austrian parliament has banned most foreign funding of mosques and required imams to be able to speak German. “Our goal is to have our own Austrian imams,” said...
A priest has been killed in North Kivu, a conflict-torn province in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The murder of Father Jean-Paul Kakule Kyalembera “appears to be an...
Lent is a season of social as well as individual repentance, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said in his Lenten pastoral letter to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In addition to...
The general counsel of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined by attorneys for Catholic Relief Services, the National Association of Evangelicals, World Relief, and World Vision,...
In a column for the Irish Catholic, David Quinn explains why the country's priests should not avoid "getting involved in politics" in light of a coming vote on acceptance of same-sex...
Pope Francis has named Bishop Charles Scicluna as the new archbishop of Malta. Named an auxiliary bishop in 2012, Archbishop Scicluna once served as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the...
Syrian Christians feel abandoned by the world, the apostolic nuncio in Damascus has told Vatican Radio. Archbishop Mario Zenari said that fearful Syrian Christians have seen no improvement in the...
Cardinal George Pell makes a short, powerful argument against changing the Church’s discipline regarding the divorce and remarriage, in a commentary posted on The Catholic Thing. After mentioning...
Vatican Radio has profiled the late Willy Herteller, the homeless man whose remains have been buried in a Vatican cemetery. Herteller, who often begged outside St. Peter’s basilica, was a regular...
The chairman of the US bishops’ communications committee has welcome a highly controversial vote by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to expand the federal government’s control over the...
An Orthodox theological seminary in Jerusalem was torched on February 26, in the latest of a series of attacks on Christian and Muslim institutions. Along with setting fire to a building, the...
At a Vatican press conference, officials of the Centesimus Annus - Pro Pontifice Foundation announced the winners of the biennial “economy and society” book award. Named after St. John Paul II’s...
Following a vote by the House of Lords, the United Kingdom has become the first nation to permit an in-vitro fertilization technique that allows for the production of human embryos with three...
Siding with a Catholic agency, an Australian judge has ruled that “polyamory,” or having multiple partners, is a behavior rather than a protected orientation under Australian anti-discrimination...
The bishops who chair the chair the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty have called upon members of Congress to...
Describing much of Europe as “Babylon,” the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for the Cooperation of Church and Society said that “Russia is the only center of non-[en]slaved...
Emphasizing that Ukraine is not experiencing “a local conflict, but an external assault,” the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said at a press conference that he has told Pope Francis...
The Islamic State has begun killing some of the 150 or more Christians taken hostage after the capture of several villages in northeast Syria, Aid to the Church in Need reports. Meanwhile an...
A homeless man will be buried in a Vatican cemetery, in an unprecedented gesture approved by Pope Francis, Italian media report. Willy Herteller, a homeless man of Flemish origin, had frequently...
Archbishop Anil Couto of Delhi has thanked India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his role in the release of Father Alexis Prem Kumar, the Jesuit priest who was freed this week after eight months...
The Vatican’s Office of the Synod intercepted mail to prevent delivery of a book to bishops participating in last October’s session of the Synod, journalist Edward Pentin reports. Remaining in...
After the San Francisco Chronicle issued a report claiming that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone plans to rescind a plan to treat parochial-school teachers as “ministers,” the San Francisco...
Reflecting on the example of the prophet Elijah, the preacher at the Vatican Lenten Retreat called upon Pope Francis and the leaders of the Roman Curia to let “the deepest truth about ourselves come...
Cardinal Ricardo Vidal, the retired Archbishop of Cebu, has joined with civil leaders in the Philippines in a “National Transformation Council,” calling for the removal of President Benigno Aquino,...
The British Parliament has voted down a bid to outlaw sex-selection abortion. By a vote of 292- 201, Parliament defeated a measure that would have explicitly banned abortions performed solely to...
An archbishop from Ghana suggested that the Church might explore using “the power of the keys” to release spouses from their marital vows, in an interview with Aleteia. “It is daring to say what...
A mosque was torched near Bethlehem on February 25, the AsiaNews service reports. Militant Israeli settlers are suspected of the crime. A fire was set in the mosque overnight, and graffiti were...
An American Methodist missionary was kidnapped by five gunmen in Nigeria on February 24. Phyllis Sortor, 70, has worked for years to bring clean drinking water to villages. NBC reported that a...
A report issued by the Liberty Institute found an increase in legal, school-related, and employment-related attacks on religious expression in 2014. The institute, based in Texas, describes...
Nearly a month after Chinese officials said that Bishop Cosma Shi Enxiang was dead, his relatives are still waiting for his remains. “All we want is to be able to bury him,” his nephew said....
Speaking on the hopes and challenges facing the Church in Ireland, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin called for a greater sense of community and for sensitivity in presenting Church...
One year after Euromaidan protests led to the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church paid tribute to those slain during the...
An estimated 20,000 Egyptians have fled Libya for Egypt in the ten days since jihadists from the Islamic State beheaded 21 Coptic Christians, according to the Associated Press. In addition, an...
While kidnapping residents from Christian villages in northeastern Syria, militants from the Islamic State burned down at least four Christian churches, according to the Assyrian International News...
Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Holy See Press Office, has confirmed that Pope Francis used the phrase “to avoid Mexicanization” in a recent private note. The use of the term...
A formal cause has been opened for the beatification of the late Fra Andrew Bertie, the 78th Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. Fra Andrew Bertie became the head of the Sovereign Military...
The forces of the Islamic State have demolished the public library in Mosul, Iraq, and the thousands of volumes it contained. The library in Mosul had been looted and vandalized after the US...
The Coptic Orthodox Church has established a “crisis unit” to help evacuate all Egypts still living in Libya, the Fides news service reports. The crisis unit, under the direction of the secretary...
An Oklahoma priest who was recently removed from his pastoral assignment had entered into a civil marriage. Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City said: “After I removed Father Dan Letourneau...
The Catholic bishops of England have encouraged their people to participate in coming national elections, after having carefully considered the moral issues raised in the campaign. In an open...
President Barack Obama has issued a brief statement on Lent. “Lent is a season of sacrifice and preparation, repentance and renewal,” he said in his Ash Wednesday statement. “Through...
A working group of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) has published a document criticizing surrogacy as a “frontal assault on fundamental shared EU...
La Alameda, an Argentine NGO opposed to drug trafficking, published a note attributed to Pope Francis in which the Pontiff reportedly expressed concern about “Mexicanization”-- leading to a protest...
A Philippine prelate has been accused of sedition after calling for the removal of President Benigno Aquino III. “We are asking him to step down because we think he is not entitled to that...
Militants of the Islamic State have abducted at least 100 Christians from Syrian villages. The Reuters news service reported that Kurdish forces, assisted by US airstrikes, are battling with...
New Zealand’s bishops have welcomed Prime Minister John Key’s decision to send troops to Iraq. “Pope Francis has said that it is ‘licit to stop an unjust aggressor,’” said Cardinal John Dew. “If...
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the largest Orthodox church, met with the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch and said that Islamic State militants “demonize Islam in the eyes of the whole...
Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki of Lviv, Ukraine’s leading Latin-rite prelate, reflected on recent meetings with Pope Francis and curial officials that took place during the Ukrainian bishops’...
A British lawmaker has reacted angrily to a statement from a group of European Catholic bishops who denounced the rise of nationalist parties. Steven Woolfe, a member of the European Parliament,...
Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako has warned that the spreading violence in Libya is a “trap” set by the Islamic State, and said that Italy should resist the temptation toward military...
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk has insisted that the struggle in Ukraine is the result of “direct aggression and invasion,” and not a civil war. The leader of the Byzantine-rite Ukrainian...
Egyptian laborers returning from Libya have said that they were kidnapped and forced into slave labor by Islamic militants, the AsiaNews service reports. Some of the returning Egyptians said that...
St. Gregory of Narek, an Armenian Catholic monk who lived in what is now Turkey and died in 1005, has been named by Pope Francis a Doctor of the Church. Born in Narek in 950, St. Gregory spent...
A Syrian Orthodox priest detained by Kurdish forces in Syria on February 16 has been released. The detention of Father Gabriel Daoud and at least 11 other Syrian Christians “would appear to be...
Father Alexis Prem Kumar, who was kidnapped in June while visiting a school for refugee children in Afghanistan, has been released from captivity. Father Kumar served as Afghanistan director for...
Pope Francis and members of the Roman Curia have begun their Lenten retreat, which is taking place from February 22 to 27 at a retreat house in Ariccia, a small city near the outskirts of...
Emphasizing that Lent is a time of “spiritual combat against the spirit of evil,” Pope Francis reflected on the Gospel account of the temptation of Jesus during his Sunday Angelus address of...
The grand mufti of Egypt, Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam, has strongly condemned the murder of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by Islamic State militants, according to regional news...
Pope Francis received Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in audience on February 21 and discussed “poverty and hunger, the exploitation of human beings and the rights of women, and the challenges...
Pope Francis received pilgrims from an Italian diocese he visited in June and renewed his call for the conversion of those involved in organized crime. “External gestures of religiosity that are...
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has released an open letter, responding to eight California lawmakers who joined in criticizing his new policy requiring Catholic high-school teachers to show respect...
Coptic Catholics paid tribute to the 21 Copts killed in Libya, as they dedicated the first Catholic church to open in Sinai. “The Church in Egypt has been strengthened by the murder of our...
Pope Francis expressed his solidarity with the people affected by continued violence in Ukraine, but stopped short of condemning Russian-backed separatists, in meetings with the country’s bishops on...
The Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, has removed a reference to Archbishop John Myers from an annual fundraising appeal, perhaps responding to criticism that the archbishop received over reports...
A Venezuelan archbishop has said that the arrest of a leading political figure is evidence of dictatorial control, and the destruction of democratic rule in Venezuela. Archbishop Roberto Lückert...
Police in Delhi, India, have announced plans to monitor security daily at Christian churches and schools, in response to a series of attacks on Church properties. After a series of break-ins,...
The managers of the Vatican pension fund have issued a public assurance that the fund is on a solid financial footing, counteracting fears that arose after Cardinal George Pell revealed that the...
The Vatican has announced plans for a worldwide initiative to encourage Catholics toward sacramental Confession and Eucharistic adoration. Pope Francis will lead the initiative, entitled “24...
An organization of European Catholic bishops has issued a statement lamenting the recent success of nationalist political parties in Europe. COMECE, the Commission of Episcopal Conferences of the...
A report issued by the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops has found that 30% of tested tetanus vaccine samples included a sterility-inducing antigen. The vaccine, funded by the World Health...
A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India has welcomed a call for religious toleration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata...
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church emphasized that Ukraine is not experiencing a civil war but a foreign invasion. “We have an aggression of a foreign country against the Ukrainian...
L’Osservatore Romano has published comments made by the future Pope Francis on the celebration of the Mass. The March 2005 address was delivered during a meeting of the Congregation for Divine...
As he received an honorary degree at a Turkish university, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople reflected on peacemaking, ecology, and the economy. “Orthodoxy is committed to ecology; it is...
Over 200 cemeteries in France were vandalized or desecrated in 2014, according to a French television report. Citing the nation’s interior minister, the report stated that 206 Christian...
A judge in the State of Washington has ruled that a Christian florist violated a state anti-discrimination law when she refused to arrange flowers for a same-sex wedding. The Associated Press,...
In a lengthy interview with the Huffington Post (!), Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the former Vatican Secretary of State, defends his record in that office and rebuts claims that he is now living in a...
A Cathoilc bishop in South Sudan has welcomed the postponement of elections that had been scheduled for June. In a radio interview, Bishp Edward Hiiboro Kusala of Tombura-Yambio said that the...
“A person can earn everything, but in the end become a failure,” Pope Francis reminded his congregation at daily Mass on February 19. In his homily the Pope remarked that Lent is a good time to...
The New York Times news service carries a report from the Archdiocese of Granada, Spain, where a sex-abuse investigation resulted in criminal indictments of 10 Catholic priests. The investigation...
The new leader of the Swiss Guard has said that his men are prepared to defend Pope Francis from Islamic terrorists. Colonel Christoph Graf, who was appointed earlier this month as commandant of...
Two groups competing for leadership of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine are in open conflict over the government’s battle with separatists, the AsiaNews service reports. Patriarch Filaret, who...
Christians in the Middle East are experiencing “the fifth year of the Way of the Cross,” Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham said in his Lenten message. The Melkite Patriarch said that...
The Vatican’s representative at UN offices in Geneva has argued that a “creative and innovative approach” to intellectual-property rights is needed in order to ensure that medicines and medical...
Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich has questioned the wisdom of Cardinal George Pell’s recent announcement that the Vatican has $1.5 billion in previously unreported financial assets. Cardinal...
Pope Francis concentrated on the need for reverence in the sacred liturgy, as he met on February 19 with priests of the Rome diocese. After being introduced by Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the...
