Global Catholic charity, Caritas, joined other Catholic agencies and faith community pilgrims heading to Glasgow this week. Caritas NZ says the pilgrims are in Glasgow to pray and to press world leaders for strong action at COP26 – the 26th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Religious leaders representing Read more
A proposal to ban circumcision in Iceland for non-medical reasons has drawn protest from Iceland’s Catholic bishop, Davíð Tencer. In common with other religious leaders in Iceland, Tencer is concerned the bill before Iceland’s parliament compromised the Icelandic Jewish and Muslim communities’ right to observe their religious practices. “Jesus Himself was circumcised, as were His Read more
A non-sectarian Museum of the Bible opened in Washington on Saturday. The US$500 million museum’s aim is to entertain and educate visitors about the Bible’s history and significance. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and the museum’s co-founder, evangelical businessman Steve Green, were at the opening. Wuerl spoke on behalf of Read more
Faith leaders in Canada, including the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Baha’i faith leaders are asking for help to tackle the famines causing death, suffering and displacement in the world today. They have named four countries that need urgent help. Read more
Fifty years ago this Wednesday, the Vatican issued a declaration that established a new rapport between Jews and Catholics. On the eve of this anniversary, the Anti-Defamation League — founded to protect Jewish lives and rights — called the Church’s approval of Nostra Aetate “arguably the most important moment in modern Jewish-Christian relations.” How so? Read more
For 98-year-old Sister Angela Rooney, it was one of the most jarring moves of her life. She always thought she would live out her days as she had for decades, in a convent under the time-honored Roman Catholic tradition of younger nuns dutifully caring for their older sisters. But with few young women choosing religious Read more
During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions Read more
It is a poignant coincidence that Popes John XXIII and John Paul II will be canonized as Catholic saints on the eve of Yom Hashoah, the international day of Holocaust remembrance observed in Israel and by Jews around the world. These two popes’ personal narratives are inseparable from the Holocaust, and their reactions to the Read more
New Testament scholars have spent an impressive amount of energy on the study of the historical Jesus and much of it in the last few decades has revolved around his Jewishness. Christian reawakening to the Jewishness of Jesus began in the late nineteenth century but received greater attention as Christians devoted increased attention to Jews Read more
They left at night, thousands of Jewish families, setting out by car, bicycle, streetcar or train. They left the Danish cities they had long called home and fled to the countryside, which was unfamiliar to many of them. Along the way, they found shelter in the homes of friends or business partners, squatted in abandoned Read more