Pope Francis has condemned the trend to ask parishioners for a financial contribution in order to have Mass for a loved one, saying that to make a personal offering is fine, but the liturgy should never have a price tag. The Pontiff spoke today during his general audience this week as part of his ongoing…

Pope Francis has given the go-ahead for martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero to be declared a saint. The Salvadorian champion of the poor was murdered by a death squad in 1980 and he has long been considered a social justice hero within the Church. According to a Vatican communique, Pope Francis made the decision at a…

Iraqi Catholic leaders are urging Christians to remain steadfast this Lenten season as they encounter challenges of the so-called Islamic State›s legacy. In a Lenten pastoral letter, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad urged Iraqi Christians to pursue unity with other Christians at this sacred time with “open hearts”. “Many Christians today live in…

Christians in China’s central Henan province have been banned from displaying religious couplets over Chinese New Year. Government officials visited villages and towns to deliver notices ordering people not to follow a practice that has become a tradition during the festival. Local Catholics are concerned that a new round of religious oppression is aimed at the province. With black…

The widespread practice of Catholics receiving communion in the hand while standing up is part of Satan’s attack on the Church, the head of the Vatican department dealing with liturgy has said. In the preface to a book on the subject, Cardinal Robert Sarah lamented the lack of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, saying this…

Protesting several actions described as a systematic campaign “against the churches and the Christian community in the Holy Land”, the heads of Christian churches announced they were closing the doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Bewildered pilgrims milled around the square in front of the church as Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, who…

Migration is not a crime and vulnerable migrant and refugee children should not be detained as if they were criminals, speakers said at a UN programme. More than one dozen speakers addressed ‘Ending the Detention of Migrant and Refugee Children: Best Interest Determination and Alternatives to Detention’ in a fast-paced discussion hosted by the Permanent…

The Church in South Korea has gathered over a million names on a petition to keep the country’s anti-abortion law in place. As South Korea continues to modernise and with the number of single mothers on the rise, calls to decriminalise abortion have increased from sectors of society. “The signature-gathering campaign was conducted voluntarily and it served as an opportunity to…

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the Irish-American Archbishop of Newark, has apologised for what he described as an embarrassing gaffe on social media after he posted a message to Twitter which included “Nighty-night, baby. I love you”. Within two hours the tweet had been deleted, and a diocesan spokesman insisted that the cardinal was boarding a flight at the…

Congo’s Catholic bishops denounced attempts to discredit their Church’s leaders and demanded the government lift a ban on peaceful demonstrations. The world “is witnessing poisonous campaigns of denigration and defamation, designed to weaken our Church’s moral force,” said a statement from the bishops’ conference. “Unswerving in our faith in Jesus Christ, king of the universe,…