German bishops are concerned that a decision guaranteeing German health insurers will pay for pregnant women’s blood tests to detect Down syndrome will lead to abortion. Matthias Kopp, spokesman for the German bishops, said that already about 90% of cases in which an embryo has an extra chromosome result in termination of pregnancy, reported news agency KNA.…
Dublin archdiocese yesterday launched the ‘Families walking together in hope’ initiative, which provides “simple” and “achievable” ideas for families and parishes in support of the Faith in the home and parish. “The ‘family of families’ (parish) will be encouraged to reconnect the ‘holy’ to the home by suggesting rituals of faith in the home with…
Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the Bishop of São José do Rio Preto last Wednesday, five days after a sexually explicit video of the bishop was shared on the internet. Bishop Tomé Ferreira da Silva, 60, led the Diocese of São José do Rio Preto from November 16, 2012, until August 18. His resignation…
We failed to nourish Catholics with ongoing adult catechesis at the parish level and we’re paying the price today, writes Fr Seán Smith All this public attention the sacraments are getting was rolling about in my head, for a different reason, as I prepared my homily for the liturgy on the Sunday of the Year.…
Letter from London Jonathan Luxmoore In a gallery of The British Museum, light plays on an array of medieval crosses, reliquaries and manuscripts, as an audiovisual display reenacts one of English history’s most notorious crimes. At the centre, three stained-glass windows, painstakingly transferred from Canterbury Cathedral, convey images from the fabled afterlife of St Thomas…
John Lavenburg When Dr Fonie Pierre looks around the streets of Les Cayes the word that comes to her mind is “desolation”. “No businesses are open. People are in streets. There is no shelter,” Ms Pierre, head of the Catholic Relief Services Les Cayes office told Crux. “There are needs for food, water, every basic need.”…
Nearly 40,000 Catholic pilgrims journeyed on foot, by bicycle, and on horseback to arrive at the Marian shrine of Jasna Góra in Czestochowa, Poland this summer. The traditional walking pilgrimage to venerate an icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa housed in the shrine dates back to the 17th century. Among the pilgrims to make…
Pope Francis saddened by attack which killed nuns in South Sudan Pope Francis has sent his condolences after a violent attack on a group of Catholic religious sisters and others in South Sudan left five dead last week. “His Holiness Pope Francis was deeply saddened to learn of the brutal attack on a group of…
Faith leaders concerned over online censorship of religious speech YouTube’s blocking of a theologian’s talk on the Christian view of sex as a “content violation” raises serious concerns that “religious speech is being censored online”, San Francisco’s archbishop and Focus on the Family’s president said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed they co-wrote. “Today’s sexual…
Young woman takes off on round-the-world record bid Pilot Zara Rutherford, 19, has taken off at the start of a three-month bid to become the youngest woman to fly solo round the world. She departed from Kortrijk-Wevelgem Airport in western Belgium in her Shark ultralight, the world’s fastest microlight aircraft. “Growing up, I loved aviation…