Letter from Rome Back in the mid-1980s, rebel Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff was the enfant terrible of Latin America’s liberation theology movement, and he had a couple of celebrated run-ins with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s doctrinal czar under St John Paul II and the future Pope Benedict XVI. At one point, Ratzinger jokingly said…
Letter from Rome Under a Pope for whom ‘synodality’ is the buzzword par excellence, meaning broad consultation and shared decision-making, it probably should be no surprise that synods and their vicissitudes are destined to be the biggest Catholic drama over the months to come. We already know about the controversial Synod of Bishops for the Amazon…
Letter from Rome When roughly 300 Catholic leaders gather in Rome from October 6-27 to talk about the Amazon, it will be the 29th time since 1965 a Pope has convoked a Synod of Bishops. For most of that span, the body’s role could have been described in the same ironic terms Bob Dole once…
Letter from Rome Pope Francis named thirteen new cardinals on Sunday past, including 10 eligible to vote for the next pope. Arguably, nothing any Pope ever does is more consequential than appointing cardinals. Not only do they immediately become the most influential leaders in the Church, but someday they’ll also elect a new Pope…
Letter from Rome Up to this point, the ire of those who believe Cardinal George Pell is innocent of the charges of child sexual abuse brought against him in his home country has been directed largely at the Australian judiciary, most recently at a Victoria appeals court that upheld his conviction on Wednesday in…
Letter from Nigeria An embattled Catholic diocese in southeastern Nigeria facing a mounting wave of violent attacks from Islamic militias has declared “enough is enough”, demanding that “bad” members of the largely Muslim Fulani tribe be “flushed out” of the area and that local self-protection groups be armed to provide their own security. Bishop…
Letter from Mexico Recently – and, many observers would say, belatedly – the Church has awoken to the reality of anti-Christian persecution around the world. The emblematic case is the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, where Catholic organisations such as the Knights of Columbus and Aid to the Church in Need have meant the…
Letter from Rome Within just the last few days, two senior Catholic prelates from Iraq have referred to plans for Pope Francis to visit the country next year as, essentially, a done deal. Of course, this is the Middle East we’re talking about, where the best-laid plans go to die. St John Paul II…
Letter from Rome When the Vatican announced last Thursday that Pope Francis had named a new spokesman, most early reaction suggested the move didn’t exactly inspire confidence about an upgrade in the role of the press office. The Pope tapped a 43-year-old Italian layman who’s worked in the press office for the last decade,…
Shortly after Pope Francis was elected in March 2013, he declared his wish to preside over a “poor Church for the poor”. While that was a statement of intent, his first real chance to make it operational came three months later when he visited the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa off the coast of Sicily,…