North Korea’s threat of nuclear war may be a desperate ploy to get foreign aid without losing self-esteem, according to the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea. “It is our presumption that they wish to draw out some financial assistance from abroad without conceding their pride or self-esteem,” said Bishop Peter Kang U-Il Read more
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has praised Pope Francis as “a man of peace and purpose” following their first meeting at the Vatican. “He is a voice for the voiceless. I look forward to continuing our conversation,” Ban said, adding that he had invited the Pope to visit the UN “at his earliest convenience”. Read more
Pope Francis and the United Kingdom’s Catholic bishops expressed sadness and prayed for the soul of Baroness Thatcher, the Iron Lady” who led the British government from 1979 to 1990. The Pope recalled with appreciation “the Christian values which underpinned her commitment to public service and to the promotion of freedom among the family of Read more
An American archbishop has said a Catholic who publicly advocates same-sex marriage and then receives Communion is engaged in “a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury”. Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit said that Catholic politicians who advocate legal recognition of same-sex marriage should not receive Communion. The archbishop’s statement closely followed a similar opinion from Read more
An Irish midwife has apologised for telling a terminally ill patient she could not have an abortion in Ireland because “it’s a Catholic country”. Ann Maria Burke admitted she made the remark to Savita Halappanavar last October but insisted that it was meant it in kindness. She was testifying at an inquest into the death Read more
Pope Francis has directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to “act decisively” on cases of priestly sex abuse. The Pope discussed the congregation’s responsibilities for at least an hour on April 5 with its prefect, Archbishop Gerhard Muller, but the formal statement following the meeting referred only to dealing with sexual abuse. Read more
Pope Francis has made his first appointment to the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, choosing a friend who is the head of the Franciscan order to help run the congregation for religious. Until his appointment as secretary of the congregation, Father José Rodríguez Carballo was in his second term as minister general of the Orders of Friars Read more
The Obama administration is facing a subpoena from the Catholic archdiocese of New York seeking White House papers for its lawsuit challenging the government’s health insurance mandate. In an attempt to block the archdiocese, the administration is arguing that the request for documents from President Barack Obama and his senior advisers would be “exceptionally burdensome” Read more
Irish Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said the Church should be “restructured and destructured” in order to bear more effective witness to the Gospel. “Newness and life will not come out of a Church which still wants to look on itself as an institution of power, even a renewed institution, or from a Church which is Read more
The Catholic Church in Scotland has come in for further criticism of its child protection procedures, with a former consultant revealing that the Church has been unable to produce the annual audits of abuse claims that it promised in 1996. The former child protection consultant, Alan Draper, who worked for the Motherwell diocese for seven Read more