Criticisms of Australian Cardinal George Pell by a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors do not reflect the role or views of the commission, a Vatican spokesman has said. The commission “does not have the task of investigating and pronouncing judgment on individual cases,” according to Father Federico Lombardi, responding to…

Bishops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have criticised governmental and United Nations failures to tackle “genocide, jihadist fundamentalism and Balkanisation” in the country. “For more than 20 years, the eastern populations have fallen victim to war and insecurity,” said the bishops from eastern South Kivu province in a pastoral message, continuing, “in 2010,…

Over 500 people took part in Liverpool’s biggest Marian procession in decades on Saturday May 30. Liverpool’s Archbishop Malcolm McMahon and Sisters from the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Mother Teresa, led children who had made their First Holy Communion through the city, stopping several times to sing a hymn and to say…

Pope Francis receives a kite from a boy during a meeting with children of Italian prisoners in Paul VI hall at the Vatican May 30. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) 

Burundi’s Catholic bishops have withdrawn permission from priests to serve on the country’s electoral council. In a statement a week before the parliamentary round of the national elections, the bishops explained that they had given a special dispensation for some priests to work with National Independent Electoral Council, but after careful analysis of the current…

Western intervention is urgently needed to halt the “monstrosities” being perpetrated in Syria and Iraq, according to a bishop whose diocese is at the heart of the conflict. Even before the rise of Islamic State, Aleppo had seen some of the worst fighting in the Syrian Civil War, with Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo claiming last…