Church officials in Germany defended plans by the country’s bishops’ conference to allow some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, insisting they have the pope’s endorsement. “We already have our own guidelines, and the pope has now clearly signaled that certain things can be decided locally,” said Robert Eberle, spokesman for the archdiocese of Read more
Pope Francis has ramped up the Vatican’s charity work, sending his chief alms-giver and a contingent of Swiss guards onto the streets of Rome at night to do what he usually can’t do: comfort the poor and the homeless. When he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis was known to sneak out at night Read more
The new head of the Catholic bishops’ conference says Church leaders in the Philippines have failed to evangelize the faithful despite there being large numbers of Filipino Catholics. “Many of our people do not even know the fundamentals of our faith,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan said in a pastoral letter on the Year of Read more
The Vatican bank named Rolando Marranci, a consultant brought in earlier this year to help oversee compliance, as director general as the troubled financial institution tries to transform itself after being hit by scandal. Rolando Marranci had worked for Promontory Financial Group advising the Institute for Religious Works on cleaning up its accounts when he Read more
Pope Francis on Tuesday criticized growing economic inequality and unfettered markets in a wide-ranging and decidedly populist teaching that revealed how he plans to reshape the Catholic Church. In an apostolic exhortation titled “Evangelii Gaudium,” or “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis has set an agenda to return the Catholic Church to the humility Read more
Pope Francis has outlined his vision for the future of the Catholic Church in an 84-page Apostolic Exhortation titled “The Joy of the Gospel,” calling for powers to be stripped from the Vatican, although he ruled out allowing women priests. Pope Francis said he was seeking advise on how his role should change – using Read more
A Vatican spokesman said the decision of the US State Department to move the Vatican embassy to a compound shared with the US Embassy in Italy was well within the Holy See’s requirements for embassies, adding that relations with the United States are far from strained. Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Canadian priest who works with Read more
A statue of a homeless Jesus done by a Canadian sculptor has Pope Francis as an admirer. The sculpture is of a life-sized Jesus sleeping on a park bench with his bare feet, wounded from his crucifixion, poking out from under a blanket. Sculptor Timothy Schmalz brought the original wooden model of his sculpture to Read more
Philomena Lee, the real life subject of the acclaimed forced-adoption drama “Philomena,” has issued a letter defending the film against accusations that it is “anti-Catholic.” Responding to a review in the New York Post that called the film “hateful and boring,” the letter published by Deadline replied directly to the Post’s critic, Kyle Smith. The Read more
The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is to publish details of abuse allegations made between 2006 and 2012, the BBC reported. The church said it would reveal the number of incidents reported, their nature and the results of investigations into them. It will also carry out an audit of all historic abuse allegations made between Read more