Cardinal Michael Czerny, who heads the development office responsible for Caritas, has defended Pope Francis’ “drastic” decision to fire the elected leadership of Caritas Internationalis in November 2022. Speaking at a week-long meeting in Rome of the global confederation of 162 national Caritas chapters, Czerny (pictured) explained that the move was necessary for the well-being Read more
Eighty years after Edith Stein’s death at Auschwitz, a Vatican cardinal has said Mass in her honour near the former death camp. Raised as a Jew, Stein was an atheist philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1921 when she was 30. She became a Discalced Carmelite nun in 1938 and took the name Sr Teresa Read more
While it is important to follow news reports about the war in Ukraine, meeting victims of that war “has an impact on the gut”, says a leading Catholic cardinal. “The impact on your eyes when you see (through the media) the bombing and the destruction and the blood and all that” is one of outrage, Read more
A Vatican cardinal has said that he will travel as far as he can in Ukraine to express Pope Francis’ solidarity with the suffering population. Cardinal Konrad Krajewski said he intended to enter the war-torn country via Poland at the pope’s behest. Krajewski holds the title of papal almoner, officially charged with performing acts of Read more
The pandemic has highlighted that immigrants are essential to the fabric of our society, Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ says. Czerny, who has been the under-secretary of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development’s Migrants and Refugees Section since 2017, is urging people to develop local solutions to address the needs of immigrant and refugee Read more
Internally displaced citizen numbers now account for over 50 million people, according to a recent study. Their needs are the focus of new guidelines Pope Francis and the Vatican have just released. “In this time of pandemic, the virus does not seem to distinguish between those who are important and those who are invisible, those Read more
The door is still open on married priests and women deacons. Although Pope Francis’s exhortation on the Amazon bypasses making decisions about women deacons and married priests, there is still room to move, say number of the pope’s close advisors. In the post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Querida Amazonia (Beloved Amazon), Pope Francis released last week , Read more