Irish people voted on Friday to ditch the country’s strict abortion laws. The landslide result overwhelmingly supported repealing the 1983 constitutional ban on abortions. The referendum results showed that among 2.1 million votes cast, 1.4 million were in favour of repealing the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. The Amendment says a mother and unborn child have an Read more
The ecological and moral emergency of climate change needs urgent help. A call to action to address the emergency while there “is still time” has been issued. Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, as well as other faith leaders and scientists, made a press statement about the emergency last week. They timed their statement to go Read more
Chinese authorities have detained 21 Japanese missionaries over the past few weeks. The missionaries were working in several southwestern provinces and in the northwestern autonomous region of Ningxia. The detention of the 21 Christian group members is thought to be part of the Chinese authorities’ efforts to crack down on missionary work. They are categorising missionary Read more
Connecting Islam with terrorism “may be on the lips of many, but that equation is a foolish lie,” says Pope Francis. Francis spoke of this and many other topics in an interview with the director of the Echo of Bergamo newspaper. Read more
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election was strongly opposed by the Catholic Church. “Since the announcement of the fraudulent elections convened by a Constitutional Assembly, which was itself illegitimately elected, and in the absence of opposition candidates, we knew … Maduro would be re-elected and that he would use any means to achieve this,” Father Georges Read more
Tolerance involves tolerating “things you do not agree with, not just ones you do agree with, and the problem with liberal tolerance is it has got to the point of only tolerating what it likes,” says British MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Rees-Mogg, a Catholic in the Conservative party, is in the spotlight for recent comments he Read more
Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide has been found guilty of covering up child sexual abuse. He is the most senior Catholic official in the world to be charged and convicted of this offence. The 67-year old faces a possible two-year prison sentence. Wilson will be sentenced next week. He has announced he will stand down from Read more
Twenty priests were among the 113 people killed when a plane crashed outside Havana last Friday. The evangelical pastors were all from the Nazarene Church in the eastern region of Cuba, Maite Quesada. They had been at a meeting in Havana and were returning to the province of Holguin when the crash occurred. According to Read more
Over 3.5 million Argentinians have joined forces in 117 cities to protest against a bill to liberalise the country’s abortion laws. The motto of the rally was “Protect them both,” meaning the mother and the unborn child. Catholics – as well as Evangelicals, atheists and others marched together to make their views known. Most of Read more
Profits are down for the Vatican bank. The Institute for Religious Works (commonly known as the Vatican bank) issued its annual report on Tuesday. The report says the bank earned 31.9 million euros in profits last year. This is about 7 million euros down from its 36 million euro-profit in 2016. The profits are returned Read more