Q: I’m a Catholic working at a funeral home and assisting at many Catholic funerals. I’m not always in the church for the entirety of Mass. I’m sometimes out during the Gospel and homily or after Communion since I’m helping with the arrangements. Since it’s not fulfilling my Sunday obligation, is it still OK for…
One of the great fruits of the Second Vatican Council has been the return of the Word of God to the heart of the Church. In the Bible we find God’s living Word that encounters us, instructs us and feeds us. Through his Word, “the invisible God, out of the abundance of His love, speaks…
A woman once shared this story in one of my classes: She had been raised in a religious home and had been a regular churchgoer. However, during her years at university her interest and practice in religion had progressively slipped so that by the time of her graduation she no longer attended church or prayed…
A senior Vatican figure has said there needs to be global cooperation on artificial intelligence and expressed concern that some states want to “go it alone” with the technology. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See Secretary of State, was speaking on September 16 after an event in the Italian parliament called ‘Faith and Reason in…
Cameroon is experiencing a surge in frequently deadly violence against women, with eight women reported killed over a ten-day span last month and no fewer than 72 women slain in the country between January 1 and April 4 this year in the central African country of 31 million. The outspoken Bishop John Berinyuy Tatah, auxiliary…
Pakistani security forces ended a standoff with militants holed up inside a police compound in the northwestern part of the country on Saturday. The standoff began Friday after a suicide bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the complex in Kohat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the country’s border with Afghanistan. Gunmen followed the vehicle,…
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori this week praised an assembly of women religious major superiors for their witness of “evangelical poverty,” with the prelate noting the outsized influence that women religious have had on American society over the past 250 years. “You and those who came before you have taught our children, tended to the sick,…
Pope Leo XIV called for international solidarity with Somalia, where ongoing violence and extreme weather are making an already severe humanitarian crisis even worse. “With great concern,” the pontiff said Sunday, “I am following the humanitarian crisis unfolding in certain areas of Somalia.” “[A]cts of violence and extreme weather events are exacerbating the already precarious…
From the first words of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV called for a synodal church that listens to its members and has repeatedly demonstrated his determination to press ahead with the sometimes controversial concept of synodality. In a June meeting of the world’s cardinals at the Vatican, the pope continued to make the case for…
A return to the Church and a thank you to Irish clergy and friends Dear Editor, I converted to Catholicism at 21 years of age and for 39 years the Church was my rock and my shield. I’m indebted to the Church for the education it gave me which enabled me to have a mature…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser