Prayers and services of remembrance were held across the world this weekend for the country’s first black President, Nelson Mandela, who died on Thursday. South African Cardinal Wilfred Napier presided over a Requiem Mass at Emmanuel Cathedral in his archdiocese of Durban on Saturday night, which was followed by an ecumenical service and an all-night Read more
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has released the names of 30 priests it believes sexually abused children between 1950 and 2013. The archdiocese also released the names of four other priests who had been included on an earlier list, but Church officials now say those four should not have been included. Seven of Read more
Andrea Tornielli, a veteran Vatican journalist, writes in her new book, “I Fioretti di Papa Francesco (The Little Flowers of Pope Francis),” that the life of Pope Francis was saved by nuns who worked in the hospital where the pontiff was ill as a young man. “I am alive thanks to one of them,” the Read more
The Vatican Bank can be blacklisted by the international finance community after investigators found poor anti-money laundering controls in place. The bank is being probed by Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s watchdog which monitors standards in finance. If the watchdog rules against the Institute for the Works of Religion, as the Vatican Bank is formally Read more
Pope Francis is setting up a commission to advise him about protecting children from sexually abusive priests and about helping victims who have already been harmed. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, announced the creation of the commission Thursday at the conclusion of a meeting between the pope and his eight cardinal advisers. O’Malley Read more
The Vatican’s new secretary of state, considered one of the most powerful in the Vatican, said this week that he knows Pope Francis intends to reform his office. Archbishop Pietro Parolin, who took over as the Vatican’s secretary of state Oct. 15, said the pope and the group of eight cardinals advising him on church Read more
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit againts the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for allegedly being negligent for barring certain treatments or the mention of the treatments such as abortion. The lawsuit was filed in the case of a pregnant woman whose life was at risk from premature labor. The group says Mercy Health Read more
Pope Francis on Wednesday called for prayers for 12 Orthodox nuns reportedly taken by Syrian rebels. Religious officials in the region have said the women were abducted, but a Syrian opposition activist said they were merely removed for their own safety. The 12 nuns join two bishops and a priest who are already believed to Read more
The Vatican Library and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library on Tuesday put the first of 1.5 million pages of their precious manuscripts online. The two libraries in 2012 announced a four-year project to digitize some of the most important works in their collections of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts and early printed books. The 2 million pound Read more
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan said the Roman Catholic Church is losing the fight against gay marriage legislation because the Church has been “caricatured as anti-gay.” Dolan talked about gay marriage and the US Affordable Care Act with David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview. “Regardless of the church teachings, do you Read more