Vatican publishes schedule for papal trip to Mongolia Pope Francis’ visit to Mongolia August 31-September 4 will make him the first pope to visit this Asian nation, which is home to one cardinal and some 1,300 Catholics. The focus of the visit will be encounters with leaders of government and civil society and meetings with…
Pope Francis has named 21 new cardinals, announcing the names after his recitation of the Angelus with the Faithful in St Peter’s Square July 9. He said he would formally install the cardinals during a special consistory at the Vatican September 30. The new cardinals represent more than a dozen countries on five continents. Three…
Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos has been sent back to prison, July 5 after negotiations between the Nicaraguan bishops and the government of dictator Daniel Ortega broke down, Nicaraguan news sources reported. According to ACI Prensa, Bishop Álvarez, of the Diocese of Matagalpa, in Managua, was released Monday, July 3 but returned to custody…
The Colombian Bishops’ Conference (CEC) will formally collaborate in the search for disappeared persons as a result of the guerrilla warfare in the country. Their remains could be in common graves or buried in cemeteries but without having been identified. In Latin America, someone who “was disappeared” means that the person was kidnapped and very…
Grand re-openings don’t always happen all at once. In the case of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, which was nearly destroyed in a July 2020 arson fire, its reintroduction to the public has happened gradually, carefully, in stages. First, there was the closing of the mission’s 250th anniversary Jubilee Year in September 2022, when the restored…
The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem condemned the Israeli government and urged peace and dialogue between both sides after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched air and ground attacks on the Jenin refugee camp in the Palestinian West Bank. IDF soldiers conducted a 48 hour military campaign starting on July 3, which was meant to destroy…
Cardinal: Catholic universities must engage with AI Catholic universities must not recoil from the daunting risks of artificial intelligence but become proactively involved in its ethical development, said the head of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. Catholic universities are obligated “to a delicate exercise of responsibility” in the “new historical era” represented by AI,…
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment’s free speech clause protects a Colorado web designer who feared she would be prosecuted under state anti-discrimination law for her faith-based objections to designing websites that promote same-sex marriage or same-sex weddings. Lorie Smith, owner of the graphic and web design studio 303 Creative LLC,…
Persistent violence in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the emergence of new groups of militia are key concerns of the Catholic bishops in the Central African nation. In a statement issued at the end of their June 19–22 plenary assembly, members of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO)…
The Catholic Church in Germany, shaken by the abuse scandal, is continuing to shrink, with more than half a million people officially quitting the Church in 2022. Most of the resignations occurred in the Archdiocese of Cologne. The wave of resignations from the Church in Germany has reached a record high, according to figures published by the…