The US Bishops and the English Westminster Justice and Peace Commission jointly oppose President Trump’s Executive Order issued last week. “The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in unity with Pope Francis, strongly supports environmental stewardship and has called consistently for ‘our own country to curtail carbon emissions,’” said Bishop Frank J Dewane of Florida. Read more
Christ’s newly restored tomb may collapse, says Antonia Moropoulou, chief scientific supervisor with the National Technical University of Athens. The tomb’s structural integrity has been a concern for over 100 years. The tomb has just been reopened after extensive renovations. Moropoulou says the collapse will be a slow, but catastrophic process. The problem is the Read more
Tyburn nuns have bought their founder’s house in France. Donations for the purchase came from all over the world. The Tyburn nuns‘ founder, Mother Marie Adèle Garnier, was born in the house in 1838. The nuns hope the house, which in Grancey-le-Château, a Burgundy town in the Archdiocese of Dijon, will become a place of piligrimage. Read more
Surrogacy’s not for us, say members of a high-profile Italian feminist organisation, Se Non Ora Quando. While they argue it’s the right of every woman to decide what to do with her own body, they are staunchly against surrogacy. Surrogacy in this context is the practice of arranging for another woman to carry and give Read more
Tearfund NZ has been blocked from sending aid to India. It is one of 11,000 aid groups who rae no longer allowed to send aid there. The Indian Government says it is “not in its national interest to receive funding from such aid groups”. The Tearfund is a Christian charity. It supports about 145,000 children. Read more
The Vatican has published a letter the Pope wrote to the UN last week about banning nuclear weapons. In this he urged the UN to “commit … to a world without nuclear weapons”. Read more
Indian Christians fear violence. They know an eruption of violence can happen anytime, says Veronique Vogel. Vogel is head of projects in Asia for international Catholic charity Aid to the Church In Need. She has recently returned from a fact-finding visit to the Church in Odisha State. That is where, in 2008, in Kandhamal, Hindu Read more
Promise Jesus and me not to bully anyone, Pope Francis asked 45,000 teens when he met them in Milan last Saturday. He also told their teachers to be aware of the bullying problem. “I ask you, in silence: In your schools, in your neighborhoods, is there someone that you mock? That you make fun of Read more
Pope Francis and the nuclear powers are at odds over nukes. To ban or not to ban? Francis says ban all nukes. He made his view plain in a message read this week at the “United Nations conference aimed at negotiating a legally binding instrument on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, leading to their total Read more
Priest crisis solved – lay people will be leading parishes in Germany, says Cardinal Reinhard Marx. The German cardinal’s motivation is his firm rejection of clustering parishes to resolve Germany’s shortage of priests. The shortfall of priests in Marx’s archdiocese of Munich and Freising is clear. He says of its 1.7 million Catholics, there was Read more