Parents who prefer not to baptise their children in the hopes that they will ask for baptism as adults are lacking in Faith, Pope Francis has said. While some believe that there is no need to “baptise a child that does not understand” the meaning of the sacrament, the Pope said doing so would deny…

The recent kidnapping of a Congolese priest illustrates some of the problems the Church has faced during the African nation’s prolonged conflict. Fr Celestin Ngango of St Paul Karambi Parish in the Diocese of Goma was kidnapped by armed men on April 1. He was leaving a parish after celebrating Easter Mass when the abductors…

A pair of passion plays were interrupted by gunfire on Good Friday as the violence convulsing Mexico continued claiming lives through the Holy Week holidays. An annual procession in Acapulco was suspended after the sound of gunshots sent participants and spectators fleeing, according to local press reports. The Guerrero state government said police were chasing…

A top official with Catholic Relief Services, visiting northern Iraq, said new life is evident for those who suffered the injustices and atrocities of the so-called Islamic State invasion of their ancestral lands but some grave challenges remain. “I see the hope of the Resurrection, while still the experience of the Cross is the reality…

A new poll shows that 73% of respondents who identified as Catholic said they would be attending church for Easter, with 53% of all Americans saying they planned to attend church services on Easter Sunday. Among respondents who said they were practicing Catholics, 95% said they planned to go to Easter Mass. For Good Friday,…

Clergy
 urged: 
spread
 Good 
News 
to 
‘new 
culture’ 
of 
youth If Jesus and his truth are to become truly present in today’s world, priests must do what Jesus did and be “street preachers”, going out to encounter and accompany sinners with tenderness and compassion, Pope Francis told the world’s priests. Jesus “could have been a scribe or a doctor of the law, but he…

Pope Francis has said today that the Eucharist is key to living an authentic Christian witness, and that those who leave Mass unchanged, continuing to gossip or hold onto unholy habits, have missed the point. “While the Mass ends, the commitment for Christian witness opens. We leave the church to go in peace to bring…

Fifty years after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination “we need to ask ourselves if we are doing all we can to build the culture of love, respect and peace to which the Gospel calls us,” the U.S. bishops’ Administrative Committee have said. On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray gunned down the civil rights…