British Prime Minister David Cameron has launched a push to change key provisions of the 1701 Act of Settlement that currently restrict the chances of female members of the Royal Family inheriting the throne and bar Catholics from the line of succession. The issue, to be discussed at a Commonwealth leaders summit later this month, Read more
Pope Benedict XVI began using a wheeled platform today to navigate the long aisle of St Peter’s Basilica, adopting the device employed by his ailing predecessor to reduce fatigue. As the platform, pushed forward by aides, glided up the marble floor towards the main altar, Benedict gripped his pastoral staff with one hand and the Read more
Pope Benedict has announced the Year of Faith in the hope that it will encourage a “new evangelisation” . The Year of Faith will begin on October 11, 2012, the 50th anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council ” up to “24 November 2013, Solemnity of Christ the King. ” The year will Read more
The Kansas City Bishop has been indicted for failure to report suspected child abuse, the first time in the 25-year history of the church’s sex abuse scandals that the leader of an American diocese has been held criminally liable for the behavior of a priest he supervised. The indictment of the bishop, Robert W. Finn, Read more
Many Muslims in Egypt are proud of their country’s heritage of religious pluralism. “So headlines like “Islam’s war on the Cross”, as in one British newspaper this week, fail to do justice to the complexities – and to the goodwill – on both sides,” according to the editorial in the London Tablet. “Egypt has long been an Read more
Six news editors have left the Zenit news agency since the forced resignation of editor-in-chief, Jesús Colina. They have resigned in protest at the interference from the publisher, the Legionaries of Christ. The six foreign language news editors, Karna Swanson, English; Gisele Plantec, French; Inma Alvarez, Spanish; Mirko Testa, Italian; Alexandre Ribeiro, Portuguese; Tony Assaf, Read more
Janusz Palikot, a wealthy former vodka tycoon, has stormed into parliament with 10 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election at the head of a motley crew of political novices that includes Poland’s first transsexual lawmaker, Anna Grodzka. The ultra-liberal party wants to repeal restrictions on individual freedoms, and end the Catholic Church’s privileges. Palikot Read more
A recent experiment cloning human embryos for potential stem cell use did little to advance a medical breakthrough and violated human life, Catholic experts said in reaction to the news. ”The attitudes of the scientists involved,” said Fr. Thomas Berg, head of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, show a “profound disrespect for Read more
Bishop Luis Santos Villeda is hoping for a birthday present from Pope Benedict XVI – permission to run for President of Honduras, once he turns 75 and retires as Bishop. Known as the ‘Red Bishop’ because of his support of the Liberal Party which uses a red flag, Bishop Santos hopes that the Pope will Read more
The Catholic Church in Egypt has implicated the regime in the deaths of 25 people, most of them Copts, in the worst outbreak of violence since the fall of Mubarak. The Church claimed that the army and police “used” a mob of street fighters armed with rifles, sticks, stones and swords who it says carried Read more