Echoing Martin Luther King, Pope Francis has offered a vision of a revitalised Europe at a critical moment in its history. On Friday, Francis gave a thunderous speech after accepting the prestigious German Charlemagne Prize, which is for “services of Western European understanding and work for the community”. The Pontiff criticised a “resignation and weariness Read more
Two US Catholic colleges are adopting housing policies which will allow students of different sexes to share a room based on gender identity. The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco (USF) will have the gender-inclusive housing policies for the 2016-17 academic year. The USF recently updated its Read more
The Church’s doctrinal chief has said Pope Francis’s document Amoris Laetitia is in line with previous Church teaching on divorce, remarriage and Communion. The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, told seminarians in Spain that the apostolic exhortation does not change the Church’s discipline in this area. John Read more
An Italian news agency is reporting that Pope Francis wants to dedicate the next synod of bishops to the issue of global peace. ANSA stated the Pope mentioned this at a recent meeting of the organising council of the synod of bishops. “But how to develop a strong initiative in favour of global peace is Read more
Pope Francis has again hit out at a clerical mindset which obstructs the laity from taking its proper role. The papal criticism came in a letter from Francis to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Cardinal Ouellet is also the Prefect for the Congregation for Bishops, which plays a Read more
The Society of St Pius X might get regular canonical status in the Church without having to recognise certain texts of Vatican II. An internal SSPX memo indicates the traditionalist society could be ready to accept if Pope Francis made an appropriate offer. But that would be conditional on the provision of “an appropriate ecclesial Read more
Swiss theologian Hans Küng says Pope Francis has set no restrictions on a request for a free discussion on the dogma of papal infallibility. But Fr Küng is refusing to release the text of a letter he said he received from Pope Francis on the subject last month. The theologian cited the “confidentiality that I Read more
Pope Francis surprised thousands of teenagers by personally hearing confessions for more than an hour in St Peter’s Square on Saturday. The Pope administered the sacrament of Reconciliation to 16 teenage boys and girls. It was part of a three-day Jubilee for Teens, for young people aged between 13 and 16, which is an initiative Read more
Australian Bishop William Morris is among the signatories to a letter calling for a new process for theological investigations by the Church. An international group of bishops, nuns, priests and lay people have written to Pope Francis calling for reform. They have specifically called for an end to anonymous denunciations. Many of the letter’s signatories Read more
By consensus, while emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was a great teaching pontiff, ecclesiastical governance on his watch often left something to be desired. Space does not permit a full listing of meltdowns and crises, but here are a few highlights: The appointment in 2007, followed by the swift fall from grace, of a new Archbishop Read more