Most Popular News Within Last 30 Days
Syrian Patriarchs plead for peace as hundreds of Alawites, Christians are killed
The Patriarch of the Melkite Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, and the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch issued a joint statement denouncing the “dangerous...
12-year decline in worldwide priestly vocations accelerates
The number of major seminarians worldwide fell from 108,481 in 2022 to 106,495 in 2023, according to statistics published in the new Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae (CWN coverage)—a decline of...Vatican newspaper editor lauds The Brutalist
Andrea Monda, the editor-in-chief of the Vatican newspaper, lauded The Brutalist, a 2024 movie, as undoubtedly “the most interesting film currently in theaters.”Weaving quotations from Pope Francis about corruption into his four-paragraph March 4 editorial, Monda wrote that “the main theme of the film is in fact the relationship between beauty and corruption, on how virtue can resist the temptations, seductions, and violence of the world, its brutality.”
Pope’s condition improved, doctors report [Monday PM update]
Pope Francis spent a restful weekend at Gemelli Hospital, and his condition has now remained stable for a week, without significant setbacks. On Monday evening, March 10, the Vatican reported...Vatican spokesman decries EU military aid for Ukraine
Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, criticized the EU’s plan to provide 800 billion euros ($867 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine.Europe “has only seemed capable of supplying arms to Ukraine, which was unjustly attacked by Russian troops, but not of proposing and pursuing concrete negotiating paths to end the bloody conflict,” said Tornielli. “And now, following similar initiatives by other world powers, Europe is preparing to invest the exorbitant sum of 800 billion euros in weapons.”
Tornielli suggested that EU leaders should instead have worked with the Trump administration to develop a peace initiative:
The expected and foreseeable geopolitical shift with the change of leadership in the White House could have led to a common initiative along the lines suggested by the Pope, aimed at ending the carnage taking place in the heart of Christian Europe. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin recently stated in an interview: “Authentic peace arises from the involvement of all parties. Everyone must have something; in a compromise, no one can have everything, and everyone must be willing to negotiate.”
Pope issues audio message of thanks for prayers
Pope Francis has released an audio message, recorded from Gemelli Hospital, thanking the faithful for their prayers and messages of support.The Pope’s message was played in St. Peter’s square on Thursday evening, as Catholics gathered—as they have gathered each day—to pray for him. “”I thank you with all my heart for the prayers you offer for my health,” he said.
The Pope’s voice was weak, and his breathing obviously labored, as he delivered the first spoken message since he was hospitalized on February 14.
Vatican announces 3-year implementation phase of Synod on Synodality
Pope Francis has approved plans for a three-year implementation phase of the Synod of Synodality, which took place from 2021 to 2024.The implementation phase will focus on the reception of the synod’s final document. Following the publication of a support document in May 2025, the plans envision diocesan evaluation assemblies in the first half of 2027, national evaluation assemblies in the second half of 2027, and continental evaluation assemblies in the first half of 2028.
The three-year process is scheduled to culminate in an October 2028 ecclesial assembly at the Vatican.
Cardinal McElroy launches first criticism of Trump administration
Cardinal Robert McElroy, newly installed as the Archbishop of Washington, DC, wasted no time issuing his first public criticism of the Trump administration, in an interview recorded before he took office.Cardinal McElroy object to classifying illegal immigrants as criminals, saying that the designation suggests “It is all right to treat them as lesser, as less human than us. That’s a very dangerous thing,” he told the Catholic Standard.
The cardinal went on to say “that’s what I think is at the core of the danger we face as a country now.”
Cardinal McElroy also voice opposition to the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal workers. He said that any staff cuts should reflect a clear judgment on what government work is necessary, and “it doesn’t seem to me that these firings are proceeding from a coherent sense of that.”
Vatican suppresses Miles Christi
With the approval of Pope Francis, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has suppressed Miles Christi.The order of priests was founded in Argentina in 1994. Its founder, Roberto Juan Yannuzzi, was laicized in 2020 for “crimes against the Sixth Commandment with adults, of absolution of the accomplice, and of abuse of authority.” In 2022, the Pope granted a pontifical commissioner oversight over the order.
Myanmar soldiers set fire to cathedral
Soldiers associated with Myanmar’s military junta set fire to the cathedral in Bhamo, a city in Kachin State, site of the Kachin conflict.“The priest’s house, the three-story building that houses the diocesan offices and the high school had already been set on fire on 26 February,” AsiaNews, the agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reported.
Last month, the regime bombed the cathedral in Mindat. It has also occupied the cathedral in Loikaw.
