The state must find Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday terror attack perpetrators and put them on trial. If they don’t, they risk the community taking justice into its own hands, warns Cardinal Malcom Ranjith of Colombo. “I want to state that we may not be able to keep people under control in the absence of a Read more
An Assassin’s Creed video game may be used to help with Notre Dame Cathedral’s reconstruction. When the Parisian Cathedral caught fire, the world held its collective breath. The spire fell, and the wooden roof was reduced to ash, but the holy relics were saved, and the interior preserved from the worst ravages of fire. Now Read more
The Irish Church must adapt and reform if it is survive the clerical sex abuse scandal and other challenges that lie ahead, said the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Diarmuid Martin, 74, the most influential Catholic prelate in Ireland, said in an interview with The Irish Times on April 22 that there’s still “a lot of Read more
Chilean abuse survivors are unhappy with a recently signed agreement between the Catholic Church in Chile and the local prosecutor’s office. The deal’s critics, including abuse survivors, say it unduly provides protections and privileges to the Church. The agreement was signed on Tuesday by the national prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, and the secretary general of the Read more
A group of priests and scholars from around the world have signed an open letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy. Dissatisfied with Francis’s reform agenda, the 19 Catholic priests and academics sent the 20-page letter to the College of Bishops, asking for the college to investigate Francis for the “canonical delict of heresy”. The appeal Read more
Pope Francis seems set to name a lay woman to replace Cardinal George Pell as the head of the Vatican finance dicastery. A Tweet by Pope Francis’ biographer, Austen Ivereigh alerted the English-speaking world that Claudia Ciocca, currently a director of the Control and Surveillance section of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, will soon Read more
If priests are forced to violate the confessional seal, no religion is safe a Dominican priest says. A proposed change in law in California would legally require priests to violate the sacramental seal of confession in suspected cases of child abuse or neglect. Fr Pius Pietrzyk OP, who is an assistant professor of canon law, Read more
A hit documentary, “Sex Slaves in the Catholic Church”, has been pulled from the Franco-German television channel Arte after a priest complained to a German court. The big-budget media investigation, about the way some Catholic priests have abused nuns and used them for sex, was broadcast in March and sold widely internationally since. The abused Read more
Forged documents and false accusations resulted in a lengthy police investigation of an Indian cardinal. Police in the Kerala state found after months of investigation that bank accounts presented as evidence against Cardinal George Alencherry, head of the Syro-Malabar Church (one of the three rites of the Indian Catholic Church), had been falsified. The documents Read more
Glasgow’s Catholic community has expressed shock after one of the city’s oldest churches was trashed by vandals. Police inquiries are continuing after St Simon’s Church in Partick was ransacked during the day on Monday causing ‘significant’ damage. While some cited a recent rise in incidents targeting Catholics, police do not believe the incident was sectarian Read more