Pope Benedict met with four recipients of the Ratzinger Prize at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican last Saturday. The meeting lasted one hour and allowed each of the academics to discuss their work with the Pope–emeritus, according to a statement from the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. Before parting ways, the group prayed…
Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick have agreed to create a joint group reviewing Catholic priests’ access to crime scenes to administer the last rites. Cardinal Nichols and Ms Dick took the step after reports that police refused access to Catholic priest seeking to anoint Sir David Amess after the lawmaker was…
The vicar general for the Diocese of Rome has banned the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass during the Easter Triduum in his implementation of Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis custodes. In a letter dated last month, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis said that Mass could continue to be celebrated according to the 1962 Roman Missal at…
Catholic bishops in France announced that they have agreed to “a vast programme of renewal” of governance practices in response to a landmark report on clerical sex abuse. Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French bishops’ conference, said that the bishops had decided to “initiate a path of recognition and reparation opening for the…
Pope Francis offers prayers for Iraqi PM after assassination attempt Pope Francis is praying for Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi after an attempted assassination attack on his home with armed drones. The Pope expressed his “prayerful closeness” in a telegram released by the Vatican on November 9 in which the attack in Baghdad was condemned…
Number of foreign-born clergy in Italy continues to rise New data shows that in 2020, 8.3% of Italy’s diocesan and religious priests were not Italian, while the number of Italian priests who are missionaries in foreign countries has continued to fall. Data from the Central Institute for the Support of Clergy, which is connected with…
The Pope met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican last week, where the Secretariat of State stressed the need to restart direct dialogue to achieve a two-state solution with Israel, while also recognising the need for peaceful coexistence among the various faiths. Addressing the meeting between the two leaders, a Vatican statement announced…
Texans have voted to prohibit the state from taking any action that would prohibit or limit religious services. SJR 27, otherwise known as Proposition 3, is an amendment to the state’s constitution that bars “the State of Texas or a political subdivision from enacting, adopting, or issuing a statute, order, proclamation, decision, or rule that…
A report compiled by Korea Future, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to investigate and document human rights violations in North Korea, has exposed details relating to the detention and torture of North Korean Christians in the past decade including all documented human rights violations that occurred as recently as 2019. The report is the…
A report on the handling of abuse cases in Germany’s Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is unlikely to be published before January 2022. Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, the law firm compiling the report, announced the delay last week. The Munich law firm said that the delay was caused by “new findings obtained in the recent past”…