As Trump takes office, he and Francis share a Russia problem As Donald Trump takes office, he enters that vaguely defined set of “major world leaders”. Though we could debate who else belongs, it would include the Prime Minister of Britain, the Chancellor of Germany, the Secretary General of the UN, the President of Russia,…
In a new interview published on January 8, Pope Francis says he came into the papacy not wanting to travel very much, but after his initial outing to the Italian island of Lampedusa in early July 2013, which is a major point of arrival for refugees trying to enter Europe, he understood he had to…
Rather famously, in 2009 the late atheist pundit Christopher Hitchens and actor Stephen Fry squared off against British MP Ann Widdecombe and then-Archbishop, now Cardinal, John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, in an Intelligence Squared debate in London over the proposition that “the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. By consensus, Hitchens…
“Preach always, and, when necessary, use words,” is a line frequently (though likely apocryphally) attributed to St Francis of Assisi. The papal version of the same idea might be formulated as: “Govern always, and, when necessary, issue decrees.” That is to say, pretty much everything a Pope does exercises leadership and shapes culture in the…
Looking at images of carnage and mayhem flowing out of Syria today, especially the ferocious fighting over the city of Aleppo, it’s clear that the country is in crisis, and it often feels difficult to make a compelling case for hope that there’s any future beyond bloodshed and heartache. Difficult, that is, until you meet…
Although logically we know the end has to come for everyone, there are certain personalities so indomitable, so larger than life, that in practical terms we come to regard them as virtually immortal. Back in the late 1990s and 2000s, I said that when Pope John Paul II finally died, those most stunned would be…
September 12 marked the 10th anniversary of perhaps the most controversial papal speech of the last half-century, an address given by emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006, which sparked a firestorm of protest across the Islamic world. In the opening section of the speech, Benedict cited a 14th-Century dialogue between a Byzantine…
Sometimes leaders learn more from crowds than from polls about how passionately people are feeling something, and in his preface to a new biography of Benedict XVI, Francis suggests crowds have taught him that ordinary Catholics are just fine with the two-Pope arrangement. Arthur Schlesinger once said that President John F. Kennedy could look at…
By choosing Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas as the first-ever head of his new department for family, laity and life issues, Pope Francis has handed a big win to pastoral moderates in the Church and also laid to rest concerns that he’s somehow hostile to Americans. (Farrell, 68, isn’t American by birth since he was…
Pope Francis has a prodigious, and deeply admirable, work ethic, but there are three good reasons why this Energizer Bunny of a pope might want to consider following the Italian lead for ferragosto and taking a break in mid-August. Monday marks an Italian holiday called ferragosto, which now coincides with the feast of the Assumption of Mary,…