A national gathering will explore how black Catholics can “embrace the gifts” they bring to the church, particularly to the Mass, according to organisers. Some 300 are expected to attend the 2024 Lyke Conference, which takes place June 18 to 22 in Grapevine, Texas. The event, launched in 2004 and held annually for most of the years…
A Christian man attacked in Pakistan on May 25 died in the hospital on Monday, causing a leading bishop to call for stronger protection of religious minorities in the Muslim nation. According to local observers, hundreds of Muslims took part in the mob violence in Sargodha, Pakistan, located in the Punjab province, in May. The…
Pope Francis condemned the recent killing of 14 Catholics in the African Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who reportedly were killed after they refused to convert to Islam. The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reported that the 14 Catholics, several of them very young, were killed in North Kivu by members of the ISIS-affiliated militia called the…
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…