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…
Bishop Robert Barron has said that he is in “frank disagreement” with the final report of the Synod on Synodality’s claim that advances in the sciences require an evolution in the Church’s moral teaching on human sexuality. In a recently published reflection, the US bishop of Winona–Rochester, Minnesota, said it is “troubling” to see how members…
The archbishop of Seoul has said that he wants to invite young North Koreans to the Catholic Church’s next World Youth Day. Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taick shared at a peace forum in Seoul this week that he plans to invite a youth delegation from North Korea to the 2027 World Youth Day to take place…
Europe has witnessed a 44% jump in anti-Christian hate crimes across more than two dozen European countries over the past year, according to a group that monitors discrimination against Christians. The Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe) November 16 released its annual report detailing the spike in anti-Christian incidents, which it…
Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, was one of several US bishops who spoke passionately in support this week of a proposal to name the 19th Century English cardinal St John Henry Newman a “doctor of the Church”. The US bishops’ Committee on Doctrine asked the country’s body of bishops November 15, during their annual fall…
A Chinese bishop who was appointed last April against the wishes of the Vatican has renewed his commitment to implement the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s programme of religious sinicisation in his diocese. Bishop Joseph Shen Bin of Shanghai made his comments in an interview with the state news agency, China News Service. “Sinicisation is a directional issue:…
Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda recently expressed his concern to the papal foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that the war being fought between Israel and Hamas could spread throughout the Middle East. Archbishop Warda, a native of Iraq and the archbishop of Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, fears that…
The wars being fought in Gaza, Ukraine and other parts of the world are destroying the future of the children who live in those nations, Pope Francis said. Speaking about the conflict in Palestine and Israel after praying the Angelus in St Peter’s Square November 5, the Pope asked the world to “think of the…