Urging the hierarchy to be more pastoral than administrative, Pope Francis has said bishops should ask whether they and their priests are serving “the People of God as a whole” rather than “the Church as an organisation”. The Pope was speaking in Rio de Janeiro to the co-ordinating committee of the Latin American Bishops’ Council Read more
Pope Francis has sent out three million World Youth Day participants to be missionaries — a task he said was mandatory, not optional. “Jesus is speaking to each one of us, saying: ‘It was wonderful to take part in World Youth Day, to live the faith together with young people from the four corners of Read more
Another controversy has broken out in Italy over one of Pope Francis’s appointments — this time laywoman Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a member of the new papal reform commission to study the Vatican’s economic and administrative structures. The 30-year-old Catholic, of Italian-Egyptian parentage, is a communications expert employed as a management consultant by multinational Ernst & Read more
The cardinal who heads the highest judicial tribunal in the Catholic Church has linked liturgical abuse to “moral corruption” and “a levity in catechesis” he described as “shocking”. Cardinal Raymond Burke said the deficiencies in catechesis had “left generations of Catholics ill-prepared to deal with the challenges of our time by addressing the Catholic faith Read more
A Vatican official facing money-laundering charges has appealed to Pope Francis, insisting he is innocent and claiming he was betrayed by his superiors. Accused cleric Monsignor Nunzio Scarano wrote to the Pope from Rome’s Regina Caeli prison, where he is detained on charges of planning to bring €20 million in cash ($NZ33.5 million) into Italy Read more
Returning to the Marian shrine where he oversaw the drafting of a crucial document on re-evangelising Latin America, Pope Francis said he wanted to “knock on the door of the house of Mary” before beginning his heavy World Youth Day schedule. Recalling the call for evangelisation issued by the Latin American bishops when they met Read more
More than 500,000 young people gathered on Rio de Janeiro’s famed Copacabana beach were urged to be “agents for a new world” in the opening ceremony of the 28th World Youth Day. In his homily on the WYD theme, “Go and make disciples of all nations”, local Archbishop Orani Joao Tempesta invited the young people Read more
A senior Catholic priest has told the New South Wales inquiry on sex abuse that he was willing to break the law by not reporting allegations against paedophile priests. Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops conference, said he would never betray the trust of a victim if they didn’t want Read more
The “right wing” of the Catholic Church is not happy about the election of Pope Francis, according to Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. The archbishop, who is known for speaking plainly, made this comment in an interview with National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen during World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro. Allen had asked Read more
Pope Francis has appointed a former papal diplomat to head the scandal-struck St Andrews and Edinburgh archdiocese, replacing Cardinal Keith O’Brien who resigned in February amid revelations of sexual misconduct. The archbishop-elect, Monsignor Leo Cushley, is a Scot who was a priest in the diocese of Motherwell before being called to Rome to be trained Read more