It’s official: the deep Amazonas is more remote than Siberia. In all of the visits I have made to provinces of the Congregation of Jesus (CJ) all over the world, never have I been without a signal for my BlackBerry… until I visited one of our sisters living and working in a community along the Read more
Pope Francis has delivered a message to organisers, players and fans of the soccer World Cup, promoting the sport’s values. The Pontiff, who is a soccer fan himself, delivered the video message in Portuguese before the tournament started last week. He promoted the sport’s values of bringing people together, teamwork and opposing racism. The Pope Read more
Brazil’s Catholic bishops have given a red card to the organisers of the World Cup Soccer tournament in their nation. The bishops are critical that billions of dollars were spent on stadiums, but Brazil’s public services are still poor. In a red card-shaped brochure distributed in churches, the Brazilian bishops’ conference urged their government to Read more
As Brazil counts down to the opening of the World Cup on June 12, churches in cities hosting the international soccer tournament are not content to sit on the sidelines and cheer. They’ve launched a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of the hundreds of vulnerable children at risk of sexual exploitation during the monthlong competition. Read more
Pope Francis has discussed the possibility of ordaining proven married men as priests, a South American bishop says. Bishop Erwin Krautler, whose diocese of Xingu is in the Brazilian rainforest, spoke with Pope Francis on April 4 in a rare private interview. The desperate shortage of priests in the bishop’s huge diocese was one of Read more
Brazil’s Catholic bishops’ conference has acknowledged that some of its members supported the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. Some bishops backed the junta in order to combat communism. Continue reading
Where once an event like the Olympics or the World Cup may have been seen as a triumph of corporate and athletic enterprise, today’s world counts the cost of games much more carefully. Previous events have left countries with decaying venues and huge bills that take years to pay off. Local communities are increasingly unhappy Read more
My Facebook newsfeed in recent days has been filled with exciting stories and photos about World Youth Day (WYD)—which ended today with a Mass in Rio. Yet again, we have had some amazing quotes from Pope Francis on his visit to Brazil reminding us about the church’s social and ethical obligations towards the poor. However, Read more
It looks like an airport hangar and it sounds like a rock concert. Thousands have packed into a megachurch on the periphery of Sao Paulo for one of Father Marcelo Rossi’s Thursday night masses. Singing priest, Father Marcelo, 46, was a personal trainer before he joined the clergy. Now he is at the forefront of Read more
As Pope Francis prepared to fly to Brazil for World Youth Day, a new study showed that the proportion of Catholics in the country — which has the world’s largest Catholic population — has dropped steadily in recent decades. With Catholicism losing ground especially among the young and city-dwellers, only 46 per cent of the Read more