Australia’s upper house of Parliament, the Senate, has rejected an attempt by the Greens to remove the Lord’s Prayer from the start of each day’s sitting. Victorian Greens Senator Richard Di Natale moved on February 13 that the prayer be replaced with the following words: “Senators, let us in silence pray or reflect upon our Read more
An appeals court in Hanoi, Vietnam, has upheld the sentence of a jailed Catholic lawyer, who is on a hunger strike to get access to Communion and Confession. The People’s Supreme Court upheld the jail term of 30 months for lawyer and dissident Joseph Le Quoc Quan for charges of tax evasion. His firm was Read more
Catholic bishops are calling on the United States government to join an international convention banning the use of land mines. The head of the US bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, Bishop Richard Pates, called on President Obama to show leadership by signing up to the 1997 Ottawa Convention. The bishop did this in Read more
Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI have appeared together at a major public service for the first time since the former Pope’s retirement. The former and present pontiffs were at a ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica to formally install 19 new cardinals on February 22. Benedict entered the basilica discreetly from a side entrance Read more
Catholic Church’s teaching are not known in Japan and the Vatican’s Europe-centric views hamper evangelisation efforts where Catholics represent a small minority of the population. This is the response of Japan’s bishops to the Vatican survey of global Catholics’ view on family issues. In what CNS describes at as a ‘sometimes pointed’ and ‘blunt’ 15 Read more
An 84 year old Catholic nun was sentenced to prison, February 18, for breaking into a Tennessee nuclear weapons facility and defacing its walls in July 2012. Sr Megan Rice a member of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus was sentenced to 35 months in prison on one count of depredation of property and Read more
The chairman of the Council of Cardinals, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga is suggesting a “Congregation for the Laity” with a “Pontifical Council for the Family” headed by married couple. According to La Stampa, the Cardinal stressed among other things that the Church definitely needs a Congregation for the Laity. “We have a Congregation for Read more
A third meeting of Pope Francis with his international Council of eight cardinals has ended without specific details being made public. Among the items under consideration were financial matters and the reform of the Vatican bureaucracy, and, according to La Stampa, Vatican Spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi told journalists, the Pope’s advisors, yesterday, presented their initial Read more
A Catholic bishop in the Ukraine, February 19, visited a hospital to give the sacrament of the sick to protesters who had their eyes shot out by rubber bullets, reports the National Review Online. The bishop’s pastoral visit came after at statement by Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, stressing that Read more
“Please, thanks, and sorry”, is Pope Francis recipe for a lasting marriage. The Holy Father offered this advice on Friday, St Valentine’s Day, to 10,000 engaged couples from 30 different countries, who accepted his offer of ‘a special date’ and joined him in St Peter’s Square. Speaking to the fiancés, Francis said expressions of courtesy, Read more