Pope Francis is set to visit Ireland in 2018, the Archbishop of Dublin has indicated. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin invited the Pope to preside at the World Meeting of Families scheduled for Dublin in 2018. The archbishop said in an interview with the Irish Independent last week that Francis had told him “I will come”. The Read more
Pope Francis has said a theology of prosperity, where God rewards a just person with wealth, is wrong. Preaching during Mass at his residence on Thursday, the Pope said Christians err when think such a theology is valid. “You cannot serve God and wealth,” the Pope said, reflecting on a passage from the letter of Read more
A leading religious sister has called for men and women to be on the Pope’s future commission to study the issue of women deacons. Sr Carmen Sammut, the president of the International Union of Superiors General (IUSG), also said sisters globally would be better equipped to carry out their work if they could become deacons. Read more
Pope Francis is likely to question humanity and the depths to which it can fall during his visit to the Auschwitz death camp in July, a confidante says. Francis will visit the camp while he is in Poland for World Youth Day. He will follow in the footsteps of his predecessors, St John Paul II Read more
In a wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis has spoken about sexual abuse, the Society of St Pius X and clericalising laity by making them deacons. Pope Francis told French newspaper La Croix that it is often a mistake to “clericalise” talented laity by turning them into deacons. “In Buenos Aires, I have known many good priests Read more
On Wednesday Pope Francis was warning that to ignore the poor is to despise God and that the Lord’s mercy for us is tightly connected to our own mercy for others. His warning came in the same week that New Zealand was featured in one of United Kingdom’s national newspapers in a story about the New Zealand Read more
Pope Francis has said he will establish a Vatican commission to study the possibility of allowing women to serve as deacons in the Catholic Church. Francis was asked during a meeting with leaders of female religious congregations about women deacons and their role in the early church. The Pope responded that he had spoken about Read more
People in need deserve more love from us than our pets do, Pope Francis has said. In off-the-cuff remarks on Saturday at St Peter’s Square, he said: “How often do we see people greatly attached to cats, to dogs”, but fail to “help their neighbour, their neighbour who is in need . . . This Read more
A cardinal has said that Pope Francis and Europe’s people have differing views on the migrant crisis because the Pontiff comes from another continent. Cardinal Dominik Duka, the archbishop of Prague, spoke about the crisis in an interview with a Czech newspaper. “The sensitivity of Pope Francis on social issues is different from ours in Read more
A recent study shows New Zealanders rank Pope Francis fifth, equal alongside the Dalai Lama among the world’s most admired men. The study, performed by Internet-based market research firm YouGov from the United Kingdom, ranked the world’s 20 “most admired” men and women separately. The most admired man for New Zealand respondents was David Attenborough, Read more