As a United Nations commission debates violence against women, the Holy See has found itself lumped together with Iran and Russia as alleged opponents of efforts to reduce such violence. The reason is that these states oppose a strong drive to use the issue of violence against women as a means to establish abortion in Read more
Interchurch relations in Nigeria have been dealt a blow by the Catholic Church’s decision to indefinitely suspend its involvement in the nation’s 40-year-old ecumenical association. Catholic and Protestant churches formed the Christian Association of Nigeria to promote Christian unity and to speak with one voice on national issues. Catholic leaders have now decided to pull Read more
Real estate interests in a “land mafia” may have been behind an attack on Christians by a 3000-strong mob which burnt 180 homes and two churches in a Christian quarter of Lahore, according to Pakistan’s Minister of State for Harmony. In a motion presented in the federal senate, the minister, Akram Masih Gill, who is Read more
China’s government has declared it will maintain its one-child policy, but at the same time stripped power from the family planning agency that oversees the regime. “The way to interpret this is that the laws are still in effect, but the judges and the policemen have all been fired,” said Wang Feng, director of the Read more
The archdiocese of Sydney has denounced as “utterly false and seriously defamatory” a news service report that claimed Cardinal George Pell had no chance of being elected pope because he was “tainted by sex abuse scandals”. The archdiocese said the report by Fairfax media misrepresented the outcome of a 2002 inquiry into an allegation against Read more
The Catholic Church in Scotland has failed to provide “compassionate and pastoral” support on issues of sexuality, the head of its media office has said. In a Radio Scotland interview, Peter Kearney said: “If there’s an area where the Church hasn’t been seen — frankly because it’s not present — it’s in that area of Read more
Cleveland’s Bishop Richard Lennon has formally excommunicated a priest who followed his parishioners into an independent worship community after the bishop improperly closed their parish. The conflict between the diocese and the parish of St Peter in downtown Cleveland began in 2009 when Bishop Lennon announced the closure of 50-plus parishes and churches in a Read more
As cardinals prepare to elect a new pope, Emeritus Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco has urged major reforms in Church governance, including how the papacy is exercised. Calling for major decentralisation of Vatican and papal authority, he said this could be achieved through the creation of regional bishops’ conferences and synods of bishops with Read more
When atheist magician Penn Jillette got into an argument over the Catholic Church with Catholic TV host Piers Morgan, Jillette ended up defending the pope and the Church against Morgan’s criticisms. Jillette, part of the Penn & Teller illusionist team, is the author of Every Day is an Atheist Holiday and God, No! Morgan, former Read more
The 565-year-old Vatican Apostolic Library is going digital. More than 80,000 manuscripts and 8900 incunabula (books or texts printed before 1501) will be preserved in digital format. The process, which will take nine years, has been made possible by the EMC Corporation, an international information technology company, making available 2.8 petabytes of storage. One petabyte Read more