A new gene-editing therapy called Casgevy, which is designed to help treat patients suffering from sickle cell disease, has been endorsed by the US-based National Catholic Bioethics Center and its president, Dr Joseph Meaney. Casgevy is a new gene therapy developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals that uses CRISPR, a genome-editing technology, to modify a patient’s blood…
Letter From Rome H.L. Mencken once famously quipped that love is like war, in that it’s easy to begin but very hard to stop. Had Mencken plied his journalistic trade in the internet age, he might well have added rumours to that list, which are notoriously easy these days to put into circulation and virtually…
Eduardo Campos Lima With an unprecedented rise in 2023 in the number of immigrants crossing Central America in an effort to reach the United States and Canada, the bishops of the region are urging local governments to establish adequate programs to deal with them and to ensure their safety. The migration crisis was the main…
Christoph Arens (KNA) In the end, the Vatican budged after all. Many German catholics had not expected its decision, announced shortly before Christmas, to allow the blessing of homosexual and remarried couples. Some reform minded catholics called it a Christmas present. For Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the decision…
Paris (KNA): A cockerel is once again watching over Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. At the weekend, the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, blessed the figure, French media reported. The golden cockerel filled with relics was then placed on the 96-metre-high spire above the nave of the church. A cockerel, the heraldic animal of the French…
Jerusalem (KNA): Representatives of almost all Christian churches have prayed for an end to the war and for hope at an ecumenical prayer for peace in Jerusalem. High-ranking representatives of the Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, Anglican and Protestant Churches attended the service on Wednesday evening. In hymns and intercessions, the Christians prayed for God’s help for…
A year from the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of the French capital, the cross is again overlooking Paris from the top of the newly installed wooden spire. On December 8, 2024, the most famous cathedral in the world will welcome the Faithful again. The French president said he will extend…
The Latin American and Caribbean bishops’ conference has expressed solidarity with Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, after the prelate said he had been told that judicial officials are seeking his arrest and the country’s outgoing government sent a strongly worded letter to the apostolic nuncio. The conference – commonly known as CELAM – said…
A deadly bomb that exploded during a Mass December 3 killed at least four people and injured dozens at a university in a predominantly Muslim city in southern Philippines. Media reports that the explosion caused panic among dozens of students and teachers in a gymnasium where Mass was taking place, at Mindanao State University in…
The pastoral centre of Christ the King Cathedral in Loikaw, Myanmar, was bombed on November 26 and occupied by the Burmese military the next day, according to reporting by Agenzia Fides, the news arm of Pontifical Mission Societies. Though no one was killed in the bombing, the pastoral centre’s ceiling collapsed and Bishop Celso Ba Shwe…
Ruadhán Jones
John L. Allen Jr.