A joint Catholic-Orthodox leaders’ gathering to celebrate the First Council of Nicaea’s 1,700th anniversary in 2025 is looking likely. On Sunday the Vatican published a personal letter Pope Francis wrote to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople suggesting the leaders’ gathering. That same day Cardinal Kurt Koch — who heads the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity Read more
Recently, we have been hearing Israeli and diaspora Jewish voices expressing disappointment at the Catholic Church’s reaction to the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7. The claim is that the pope has not sufficiently condemned the crimes of Hamas and, furthermore, that he has created a symmetry between Hamas and Israel in his comments. If that Read more
Cardinal Kurt Koch, a top Vatican official, has met with one of Germany’s leading Catholic bishops and has “apologised” to “all those who felt offended” by a parallel he recently drew between the methods used by the country’s Synodal Path and the theories of a historic pro-Nazi Lutheran group. The closed-door meeting between the Swiss Read more
The president of the German bishops’ conference Bishop Georg Bätzing sat down with Cardinal Kurt Koch on October 4 to clear the air with the ‘Christian Unity’ president. Bätzing had demanded an apology from the Vatican’s Koch (pictured) over comments that brought up Germany’s Nazi past. He lamented what he called Koch’s “untenable statements” about the Read more
Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has supported a suggestion that Catholics and Orthodox work to agree on a common date to celebrate Easter. Several attempts, often led by Orthodox bishops, have been made over the past 100 years to push for a common date for Easter. It seems most Read more
Catholics must work towards Christian unity, a new guidebook from the Vatican says. It can no longer be seen as “optional” by bishops. They won’t be left to work out how on their own though. The new guidebook, released by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, offers practical ways for bishops to promote unity Read more