The Vatican has released a 50-page working document urging Roman Catholic bishops to engage in discussions regarding LGBTQ+ inclusion and the role of women within the church. The document, called Instrumentum Laboris (Latin for “working document”), is based on the input gathered from a two-year worldwide global synod, where Catholics were invited to share their Read more
Pope Francis has appointed Fr John Adams from the Diocese of Christchurch as the new Catholic Bishop of Palmerston North. The appointment was announced in Rome at 10pm New Zealand time, Thursday 22 June and it fills a vacancy created by the resignation of Bishop Charles Drennan in 2019. Ordained as a priest in 2003, Read more
We are now just a few months away from the October 2023 assembly of the Synod on the “synodal process”. A second assembly is scheduled for October 2024. Both will be held at the Vatican. The working document for this first assembly is to be unveiled to the press on June 20 and the names Read more
The newly appointed Archbishop of Madrid, José Cobo, has expressed his desire to “reposition the Church” in response to a rapidly changing society. “We can bring the capacity or the desire to reposition the Church within our world. Perhaps in different ways, with other languages,” Cobo stated. After his installation on July 8, Cobo said Read more
Picton’s much-loved St Joseph’s Catholic Church is facing demolition. After 158 years, tenders to level the church building are being sought. Its long history of Sunday masses ended on January 13, 2019 and its doors were closed for good after a parish property review later that year. The soon-to-be-razed Catholic church building was the second Read more
The word synodality has been around a year or so now and people are still asking what it really means — for them, of course. The last time the church said it was going to make changes was in 1965. Fifty-eight years ago. In the meantime, all the changes to be seen were basically meaningless Read more
There is probably no pope in all of history — certainly not in the last 400 some years — who served so briefly as Bishop of Rome and yet had such an immense impact on the Catholic Church as John XXIII. [That’s leaving aside Sixtus V. He’s the hard-nosed pope who, in just five years Read more
A recent study suggests a collapse in marriages and resident fatherhood is fuelling a loneliness epidemic and “the unravelling of Christianity” in the US. Communio, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to strengthening families through partnerships with churches nationwide, conducted the study involving 19,000 Sunday church attendees from 112 evangelical, Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. The survey Read more
Lay people will begin leading prayers at the graveside or in crematoria in some parishes in the Diocese of Down and Connor this summer, in response to the shortage of priests. The move is part of a pilot announced by the Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, in his role as apostolic administrator of the diocese Read more
Pope Francis underwent successful surgery on Wednesday to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall, the latest maladies to befall the 86-year-old pontiff who had part of his colon removed two years ago. The Vatican said there were no complications during the three-hour surgery, which required Francis to be under Read more