For more than 65 years, the Catholic Church in North Korea has been known as the “silent church”. Then dictator Kim Il-sung purged and executed leading church figures after the communists took power in the north in 1948, severing ties with the Vatican. Contact between North Korean Catholics and the outside world remains rare. Following Read more
A recent poll, which Fr Lucie-Smith has blogged about [recently], suggests that 40 per cent of the British don’t believe that Jesus was a real historical figure. Here is another depressing statistic from the US: 79 per cent of Catholics who lapse, do so before the age of 23. I learnt this from the blog Read more
Two days before a longtime Vatican official burst from his stained-glass closet last month, he was dining with an Italian media consultant inside an elegant restaurant on the right bank of Rome’s Tiber River. The topic of conversation: How should the official come out? Krzysztof Charamsa was still employed at one of the Holy See’s Read more
Father Michael Delcambre looked at his congregation on Sunday and realised he had what other pastors might call an unusual sight. He counted 10 newly married couples sitting right there in the pews, and they were regulars. “I wondered if these couples would be coming to Mass if we had not really gone out of Read more
LINABUAN SUR, the Philippines — When Eril Andrade left this small village, he was healthy and hoping to earn enough on a fishing boat on the high seas to replace his mother’s leaky roof. Seven months later, his body was sent home in a wooden coffin: jet black from having been kept in a fish Read more
The plight of persecuted Christian families in the Middle East was addressed during the Synod on the Family in Rome, October 5-25. Synod Fathers acknowledged the particular and urgent circumstances that so many Catholic families face each day. The Fathers expressed fraternal sorrow for families forced to flee their homes, and gratitude for those nations Read more
“Ready for the marriage apocalypse?” challenges CNN. “Young couples shun marriage over divorce fears,” booms the Telegraph. Headlines like these give the impression that marriage has all but died among millennials – but this isn’t the whole picture. It is true that marriage among young people in the UK is on the decline. In 2012, Read more
In 2010, Sister Paschal (Jennie) O’Sullivan returned home to Ireland at the age of 98 after 75 years of missionary work in Japan, which including teaching English at one of the Japan’s most prestigious girls’ schools, Denenchofu Futaba in Tokyo. Among her past pupils is Japan’s Crown Princess Masako. Following Sister Paschal’s 100th birthday, her Read more
How can you spend your workdays chronicling thousands of cases of Catholic priestly sexual abuse — and still remain a Catholic? Before the release of “Spotlight,” the movie detailing the massive abuse cover-up in Boston, I asked that of Anne Barrett Doyle and Terry McKiernan. They’re co-directors of BishopAccountability.org, which documents that abuse from an Read more
In the last chapter of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis begins by acknowledging that “Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change.” The path to change comes through education and spirituality. “We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a Read more