The Vatican’s newspaper has acknowledged actor Robin Williams, who took his own life and was found dead on August 11. In a brief article, L’Osservatore Romano called the comedian and actor an “unforgettable clown with a heart of gold”. Williams had recently been battling severe depression , according to his publicist. He was known to Read more
Vatican officials and diplomats have expressed support for US airstrikes in Iraq amid fears of genocide against religious minorities. Islamic forces have swept northern Iraq in recent weeks, killing or expelling Christians and religious minorities like the Yazidis in a campaign that some consider tantamount to genocide. The Vatican’s nuncio in Iraq, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua Read more
Cuba’s communist Government is on the brink of permitting the building of the first new Catholic church in the country since the Marxist revolution of 1959. The church will be built in country’s second city, Santiago de Cuba. Catholics in the city have been attending Mass in the street since Hurricane Sandy destroyed their previous ramshackle Read more
A New South Wales court has upheld the will of a man who stipulated his children must become Catholic in order to receive their inheritance. Patrick Carroll died in 2012 and his will stated that, in order to inherit, his adult children must attend his funeral and become Catholic within three months of his death. Read more
A leading Irish theologian has described the Vatican’s actions to censure a founder of Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests as “theologically inept”. In a new book, Augustinian Fr Gabriel Daly examines the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2012 silencing of Fr Tony Flannery and its suspending him from ministry. Flannery, a Redemptorist, had Read more
Catholic dioceses in Nigeria have advised priests to skip the Sign of Peace at Mass as one of several measures against the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. West Africa is faces a worsening crisis from the disease. Nigerian priests in some dioceses have also been advised to refrain from giving Communion on the tongue, unless Read more
Christians should memorise the beatitudes which Jesus taught as the path to true happiness, Pope Francis has said. Speaking at his weekly audience at the Vatican on August 6, the Pope linked the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments and the Last Judgement. Some 6000 people heard the Pope tell them he was so serious about Christians Read more
Catholic King Richard III is to have an effective state funeral and will be reinterred in a Church of England cathedral more than 500 years after his death. The only English monarch without a marked grave, his remains were found beneath a council car park in Leicester two years. The remains of the Catholic king Read more
Donations have flooded to a US shelter for women and children after an archdiocese withdrew a grant because it didn’t like who was praying there. Debra Meyers, a member of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWR), was invited to lead a Sunday prayer service at Lydia’s House in Ohio on the feast of Read more
Pope Francis’s courage is causing disquiet among those with “a very conformist and closed Catholicism”, the Archbishop of Dublin has warned. At a Catholic leadership conference in Melbourne last month, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin spoke of a young curate who recently told his parish priest he was not happy with some things the Pope had said. Read more