New figures from the Vatican Secretariat of Economy show the Holy See’s deficit halved to €12.4 million (about NZ$19000000) in 2015. This is down from €25 million both in 2014 and 2013. Read more
New figures from the Vatican Secretariat of Economy show the Holy See’s deficit halved to €12.4 million (about NZ$19000000) in 2015. This is down from €25 million both in 2014 and 2013. Read more
When funding cuts forced the closure of an anonymous, low-cost depression support group for women, Heidrun Lehmann decided she had to keep it going. She said Wellington Women’s Health Collective group helped her through the “despair” of depression, and the service was “too good to stop”. Since 2006, Lehmann and a handful of Wellington women Read more
Prince Charles and Camilla will meet Pope Francis in a private audience when they visit the Holy See at about the end of March. It will be their first meeting with Francis. The Royals will be touring Romania, Italy, the Vatican and Austria during the end of March and beginning of April. Read more
The Roman Catholic Church of Guam has established a $1 million settlement fund for victims of child sexual abuse. In a news conference with his nine-member archdiocese finance council, Archbishop Michael J. Byrnes said the funds will become available as soon as the archdiocese has put in place an administrator who will be supported by Read more
Consult your Bible as often as your cellphone. The Pope urged crowds at St Peter’s Square to give the Bible the same place in their daily life as cellphones. He asked them: “What would happen if we turned back when we forget it, if we opened it more times a day, if we read the Read more
As the Vatican released the preparatory document for the 2018 synod of bishops on “Young people, faith and vocational discernment”, Palmerston North Bishop Charles Drennan said the value of knowing the thoughts and aspirations of young people in the Church can never be overestimated. The preparatory document included a series of questions to be answered by national conferences of bishops and other Church bodies. Responses, along with input from Read more
Sacred music and liturgical chant needs renewing and improving, Pope Francis said at a major international conference on sacred music on Saturday. “Sometimes a certain mediocrity, superficiality and banality have prevailed, to the detriment of the beauty and intensity of liturgical celebrations,” he said at the conference organized by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Read more
Seventy per cent of New Zealand’s prisoners are functionally illiterate. Most left school young with undiagnosed learning disabilities or care and protection issues that impacted their education. Prison education programmes boosted the literacy and numeracy skills of 42 per cent of prisoners last year, according to Corrections’ annual report, and there are plans to increase the number of prisoners Read more
Fancy seeing the Sistine Chapel like Michelangelo did? New photographs of the Sistine Chapel’s artworks have been presented in a massive book that shows them in 1:1 ratio. In other words, the photos show the artworks as the actual size Michelangelo painted them. The book will enable art lovers to have a close-up view of Read more
A leading world critic of Muslim extremism says New Zealand should establish “assimilation centres” for migrants and refugees from Muslim countries. Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Netherlands MP for the right-wing People’s Party, has been under police protection since she made a film in 2004 about violence against women in some Muslim cultures. Continue Read more