Church leaders risk sowing scandal and confusion, experts say, by allowing a female monk who has been living as a male for years – and who recently publicly announced her transgender identity – to continue presenting herself as a man. Christian Matson, a hermit living in the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, went public with her…

After the leader of the Italian bishops recently appeared to throw cold water on a key constitutional reform backed by Italy’s conservative government, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni essentially told the bishops to back off, reminding them that “the Vatican state is not a parliamentary republic”. President Meloni made the comments in a May 30 interview…

Berlin (KNA) Papyrus experts have deciphered a manuscript fragment as the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. They dated the manuscript to the 4th to 5th century, as the Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University (HU) in Berlin announced on Tuesday. The Gospel tells of the childhood of Jesus and…

A May 25 attack on Christians in north-central Pakistan by an enraged Muslim mob, accusing a Christian man of having defaced the Quran, represents a “dark day” for the country’s Christian community, Pakistan’s top Catholic official has said. “I strongly condemn this incident. It’s a dark day for the Church in Pakistan,” Bishop Samson Shukardin…

A Catholic fraternity is taking the White House to court after it was banned from holding an annual Mass it has staged at a national cemetery for more than 60 years. The Knights of Columbus has held a Memorial Day Mass at the Poplar Grove National Cemetery in Virginia every year since 1960. But it is claiming religious discrimination after…

Freiburg (KNA) Around three years after the Islamist Taliban took power in Afghanistan, the situation of the population there is dramatic, according to Caritas. “The humanitarian situation remains extremely precarious,” said Oliver Müller, head of the aid organisation Caritas Germany, in an interview with the magazine “Herder-Korrespondenz” (June issue). “Around 23 million people, half the…

By Tobias Käufer (KNA) The two moments that made him immortal were only 180 seconds apart: in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England, Diego Maradona showed his two faces: that of the genius and that of the cheat. Because Argentina, on their way to their second World Cup title, had put the English, who…

Alexander Riedel (KNA) According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Jews in Germany are facing ever greater dangers. Even in the current global political situation, “the rise of anti-Semitism is a clear crisis seismograph”, said the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, on Monday…

Paris/Rome (KNA) For papal adviser and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, there is no way back to a Christian Europe. Christians are increasingly becoming a minority in Europe today, said the Archbishop of Luxembourg in an interview with the newspaper “La Croix” (Thursday) in Rome. Politically, this has led to a lack of ideas. Eighty years ago,…

Jerusalem (KNA) During excavations south of the Bedouin town of Rahat in the Negev Desert, Israeli archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a 1,500-year-old church. They found drawings of contemporary ships on parts of the remains of the wall, which could have been made by Christian pilgrims, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority (Thursday). According…