A Vatican prosecutor requested that Fr Gabriele Martinelli, who is accused of sexually abusing a younger student at the St Pius X Pre-Seminary, be sentenced to six years in prison if convicted. At the 11th session of the Vatican criminal trial July 15, Roberto Zanotti, the prosecutor, explained that the recommended sentence for the crimes…
Personal Profile The Church’s emphasis on older people as “treasures of the Church” and “teachers of wisdom and prayer” is a much-needed antidote to our age’s tendency to side-line the elderly. So says Catherine Wiley, founder of the Catholic Grandparent’s Association (CGA) and herself a mother and grandmother. She and the CGA have been on…
Pope Francis’s decision to restrict celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, effectively rolling back wider permission granted under Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, is being met by predictably mixed reaction from Catholics around the globe, with some praising the move as prophetic and others calling it a stain on Francis’s legacy. Speaking to Crux, liturgy…
Church officials are studying a reported miracle attributed to an Italian Catholic who died at the age of 21, the postulator of his cause has said. Fr Walter Vinci, Postulator General of the Order of St Camillus, noted that Pope Francis had recognised the heroic virtues of Nicola d’Onofrio on July 5, 2013. Heroic virtue is one…
Christina Malone Three weeks ago, we finally got to celebrate Grace’s First Confession. A week before the clothes were picked and laid out on her bed every day. The excitement was unreal. Grace asked me if I remembered my First Confession. Yes, of course I do. I was about eight years of age and like…
Fatima, the Family and Church: Mary’s Message with Prayers and Devotions by Timothy Tindal Robertson and Donal Anthony Foley (Catholic Truth Society, £3.50 / €4.20) This booklet is by two writers who have between them decades of work in promoting Fatima. In 2013 Pope Francis decided to hold a Marian Day in the Year of Faith…
A new Biblical anthropology seeks to answer the perennial question, what is man, Ruadhán Jones hears Scriptural studies are as old as the hills; anthropology is little more than 150 years old. In bringing the two together, the Pontifical Biblical Commission is living out the call of Vatican II to read the signs of the…
Vatican’s financial watchdog highlights ‘increasing trend’ in reports to Promoter of Justice The Vatican’s financial watchdog authority reported last Thursday that it received 89 suspicious activity reports in 2020, 16 of which it forwarded to the Promoter of Justice for possible prosecution. In a 52-page annual report, released July 15, the Supervisory and Financial Information Authority…
“Some things need to be said and said and said again until they don’t need to be said anymore.” Margaret Atwood wrote that. I quote it here because each year I write a column on suicide and mostly say the same thing each time because certain things need to be said repeatedly about suicide until…
Sweet Treats Banana bread is a staple in any baker’s repertoire and this recipe doesn’t even call for a hand mixer so it’s perfect for beginners. If you don’t even have a loaf tin you could always make mini banana bread muffins, a delicious breakfast treat, just adjust the cooking time down as necessary. A…
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser