Pope Francis has made an historic decision to appoint women to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They are the first females members and the first non-clerics to be appointed to the Congregation. The three women appointed are: Linda Ghisoni, who is a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University and an Read more
Intercommunion – enabling non-Catholics to receive the Eucharist – is to be discussed in Rome. Although several news sources say Francis has already rejected a draft plan to allow non-Catholics who are married to Catholics to receive Communion in certain circumstances, it seems this is not the case. German Bishops’ Conference president, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Read more
The Vatican has convicted the suspended Anthony Apuron, Archbishop of Agaña (Guam), of some charges made against him of sexually abusing minors. A five-judge apostolic tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced its verdict in Apuron’s canonical case on March 16. The release did not specify which acts the archbishop had been Read more
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has a new undersecretary, with Pope Francis appointing Monsignor Giacomo Morandi to be its second highest-ranking official. Morandi, who is from Italy, is a Biblicist (i.e. a person who interprets the Bible literally). He had already been chosen by the pope in 2015 to be the Read more
Pope Francis has replaced the conservative Cardinal Gerhard Müller as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the Jesuit Archbishop Luis Ladaria. Ladaria, who is 73, has previously served as the office’s secretary. He is a Spanish Jesuit theologian. For the past five years Müller has been the prefect of the Read more
The Vatican has admitted it has a backlog of 2000 clerical sexual abuse cases. Despite this, Pope Francis said the Vatican is on “the right path” to resolving each of them. Francis has always made it clear that he has “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse. Speaking during an in-flight interview after leaving Fatima about the Vatican’s Read more
It’s been a big week for the clergy and their dealings with the police across the world. In legal matters in countries covering four continents – India, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Australia – clerics are being held to account by police and civil courts: Two priests in India have been charged with murdering the Read more
A coalition of 16 United States progressive Catholic groups has written to Pope Francis asking for a public apology to American nuns and a theologian. The Nun Justice Project wrote an open letter regarding recent comments by Cardinal Gerhard Müller to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. On April 30, Cardinal Müller, the prefect of Read more
The Vatican is investigating a Jesuit theologian from India for allegedly espousing unorthodox beliefs. Censure has reportedly been threatened against Fr Michael Amaladoss, whose best-known book is “The Asian Jesus”. But the Jesuit provincial of Fr Amaladoss’s Indian province said there had been no condemnation or censure. Rather, there has been an ongoing dialogue that has Read more
A major leadership group of US women religious says two years of meetings with the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation has resulted in mistrust. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious said in a statement released on May 8 that communication had broken down with the congregation and, as a result, “mistrust has developed”. On April 30, at Read more