The murder case of Salvadoran martyr Blessed Oscar Romero has been reopened. The Archbishop of San Salvador, an outspoken critic of the violence in the El Salvador Civil War as well as poverty and corruption in the Central American country, was shot and killed while celebrating Mass in 1980, but because of an amnesty prohibiting…
There is a great need for “prayer and penance” to plead for the end of the many wars spreading all over the world and the many “absurd conflicts” that “disfigure the face of humanity”, Pope Francis has said. Referring to the canonisation of Ss Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto in Fatima, he said that the…
Ambar Calvo, a 20-year-old student of architecture at the University of Panama, was the winner of the competition among 103 entries for the next World Youth Day logo, to be held in Panama from January 22-27, 2019. Msgr José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta, Archbishop of Panama, said the design managed to capture the message the country…
Bishop Giorgio Bertin of Djibouti has urged the international community to focus on alleviating the drought in Somalia, as six million people experience severe food shortages and contend with the al-Shabab extremist group. Bishop Bertin expressed fear that the country may slip into a famine if action was delayed. “The Somali government, international community and…
Church leaders in Indonesia have criticised the government for using the country’s drugs problem as an excuse for rejecting the UN recommendation to abolish the death penalty. The recommendation, put forward at the 27th session of the UN Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, which reviewed Indonesia’s human rights situation, was rejected by Law and Human…
Welcoming the election of Emmanuel Macron as president of France, the head of the French bishops’ conference has said he hoped elections next month to the National Assembly will not place the country “in an ungovernable situation”. Elected last weekend with 66.1% of votes in the second-round presidential ballot, former economy minister and head of…
The Vatican is investigating the decision by a group of Belgian psychiatric care centres run by a religious order to allow doctors to perform euthanasia of “nonterminal” mentally ill patients on their premises. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, is personally examining the situation, according to Bro. Rene Stockman, superior general of the Brothers…
The American Health Care Act the US House of Representatives passed by a four-vote margin has “major defects” according to the chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Social Development. Venice, Florida’s Bishop Frank Dewane said it was “deeply disappointing that the voices of those who will be most severely impacted were…
Just days after the far-right French presidential candidate Marine le Pen said the Church “interferes in everything except what it should really be concerned with”, France’s bishops have issued reflections on the presidential election. The bishops’ reflections were published within hours of the announcement that Emmanuel Macron, founder of the centre-left En Marche! Movement and…
The Devil is behind the hatred driving the persecution of Christians around the world, Pope Francis has said. Speaking at a prayer service in Rome’s Basilica of St Bartholomew, which has been dedicated to the New Martyrs since 2000, the Pope reflected on the Gospel in which Jesus said, “If the world hates you, remember…