The Vatican announced on April 26 that there will be laypeople participating as voting members in the Synod on Synodality’s October assembly, a break with past custom, which allowed laypeople to participate without the right to vote. Pope Francis will also approve every member in advance. The general assembly of the Synod on Synodality will…
Vatican reportedly preparing text for divorced and remarried couples The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life is preparing a document that will address divorced and remarried couples at the request of Pope Francis, according to the dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Kevin Farrell. Cardinal Farrell mentioned the in-progress document in a speech delivered in Italian…
World leaders – including those from the Church, humanitarian and diplomatic community – have appealed for a return to dialogue to save Sudan, as fighting triggered fears of a humanitarian catastrophe in the northeastern African country. The leaders are pushing for a ceasefire, humanitarian access and respect for civilians and civilian structures, as the Sudan…
Catholics gathered at the continental level say the Church must be united, not uniform, and embrace its many forms of expression throughout the world, said members of the synod preparatory commission after a weeklong meeting at the Vatican. “I think one of the most important things we have experienced during these ecclesial, continental assemblies, is…
The Pope’s safeguarding commission, preparing to move into a fresco-ceilinged palace in Rome’s historic centre, must not be merely engaged in “PR”, but become a refuge for those abused by clergy and silenced by the Church, said leading safeguarding expert Jesuit Fr Hans Zollner. Speaking to journalists April 17 about his decision to leave the…
One of the top military hospitals in the US says it is reviewing a Catholic pastoral care contract it awarded last month to a Virginia-based firm that specialises in providing government clients with industrial machinery, tactical gear, and janitorial supplies, in addition to chaplains and other religious staff. Franciscan friars at Holy Name College in nearby Silver…
At least 94 people reportedly have died in a series of deadly attacks on Christian communities throughout Holy Week in Benue state in north-central Nigeria, an ominous sign of escalating violence blamed on Muslim militias in the country’s Middle Belt region. On April 2, armed men reportedly stormed a Palm Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in…
The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has confiscated a cloistered monastery and arrested 20 people for activities related to Holy Week in Nicaragua. The Trappist sisters of Nicaragua, who left the country in February after 22 years of service, reported April 11 that the government verbally informed the…
Pope Francis has prayed that Christians would experience the joy of Easter and allow Christ’s resurrection to be “the light that illumines the darkness and the gloom in which, all too often, our world finds itself enveloped”. “In Jesus the decisive passage of humanity has been made: the passage from death to life, from sin…
Armed bandits killed one person and kidnapped more than 100 others in a March 14 raid on a predominantly Catholic town in north-central Nigeria, according to a Catholic priest and other local sources. Fr Dauda Musa Bahago, a coordinator for the Justice, Development, and Peace Commission, a Catholic aid organisation, told CNA the attack took place…
