The other night I was drinking with an American Catholic nun and her daughter.The mother had been married twice, once to a former priest. She had entered a convent straight out of high school and left to marry her high school sweetheart eight years later. Some time after the second marriage broke down and her Read more
The Vatican has called a “summit meeting” for the leaders of the Eastern churches in communion with the Holy See, to take place on November 19-22. Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, said the meeting would allow the leaders of the Eastern churches to “speak before the Pope on Read more
State officials in North Dakota are warning Catholics who received Holy Communion from Bishop John Folda, between September 27 and October 7, to be aware of symptoms of Hepatitis A. Bishop Folda contracted hepatitis from contaminated food while in Italy last month for a conference of newly ordained bishops, Aliceyn Magelky, spokeswoman for the diocese, said Read more
Four Iranian men are due to get 80 lashes each for drinking communion wine during a “house church” service. House churches are a way for Iranian Christians to gather in unofficial buildings to conduct Church services. The Independent reports the four men, Behzad Taalipasand, Mehdi Reza Omidi, Mehdi Dadkakh and Amir Hatemi, were originally arrested Read more
The German archdiocese of Freiburg has indicated its willingness to allow some remarried divorcees to receive Communion — but the Vatican has signalled the move should be halted until next year’s Synod on the Family is held. Freiburg’s pastoral care office has published a 14-page guidebook for priests and deacons in the archdiocese with detailed Read more
A Vatican department has taken the unusual step of issuing a public denial that it is preparing a document on the reception of Communion by Catholics who are divorced and remarried. The denial follows an article circulated by an Italian news agency claiming that Pope Francis had asked Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Read more
An account of a eucharistic miracle in Buenos Aires, involving Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — has been published in a Polish-based magazine. The article says a priest in the commercial centre of Buenos Aires was finishing distributing Communion at Mass in 1996 when a woman told him she had found a discarded Read more
An American archbishop has said a Catholic who publicly advocates same-sex marriage and then receives Communion is engaged in “a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury”. Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit said that Catholic politicians who advocate legal recognition of same-sex marriage should not receive Communion. The archbishop’s statement closely followed a similar opinion from Read more
As the Irish Parliament prepares to consider a bill to legalise some abortions, the head of the Vatican’s canon law tribunal has said Catholic politicians who support the bill should be refused Communion in the hope of inspiring a “conversion of heart”. “There can be no question that the practice of abortion is among the Read more
The incoming head of the Swiss bishops’ conference has suggested that allowing remarried divorcees to receive communion and lay people to deliver homilies is a “pragmatic” course of action. The Swiss bishops elected Bishop Markus Buechel of St Gallen to be the next president of the Swiss bishops’ conference, replacing Bishop Norbert Brunner in January. Read more