Pope Francis June 1 accepted the resignation of an Indian bishop cleared in early 2022 of charges of raping a religious sister in his diocese. The resignation of the 59-year-old Bishop Franco Mulakkal as head of the Diocese of Jalandhar comes more than 16 months after his acquittal by a court in India’s Kerala state…
Fulgence Kayishema, a former Rwandan police officer who is suspected of having ordered the killing of at least 2,000 Tutsis who were seeking refuge at St Paul’s Nyange Catholic Parish in the current Nyundo Diocese during the 1994 genocide, has been arrested in South Africa. Reuters reported May 25 that Kayishema, one of the top suspects…
Benedict XVI’s private secretary to return to home diocese According to a German newspaper report, Pope Francis ordered Archbishop Georg Gänswein to leave the Vatican and return to Germany by the end of June. The longtime private secretary of Pope Benedict XVI has been told to return to his home diocese of Freiburg in southwest…
Pope has named two-thirds of cardinals eligible to elect his successor Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the retired archbishop of Naples, celebrated his 80th birthday on June 2 and, consequently, became ineligible to enter a conclave to elect a new pope. The cardinal’s aging out left the College of Cardinals with 121 clerics under the age of…
The archbishop of Grouard-McLennan in Northern Alberta, Canada, says he is saddened but “not overcome” by the loss of a 121-year-old church to arson on May 22. A second church in Alberta, St Mary’s Cathedral, was also the victim of alleged attempted arson three days earlier, as local police seek assistance in identifying a man…
The Mexican Bishops’ Conference (CEM) expressed “consternation and pain” over the May 22 murder of Augustinian Fr Javier García Villafaña and demanded “an exhaustive and transparent investigation”. “We strongly condemn this act of violence that has not only taken a life but also threatens peace and justice in our nation,” the Mexican bishops said. “It’s…
Pope Francis has asked Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna to lead a mission “to help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine,” the Vatican press office said. The appointment of the cardinal, who is president of the Italian bishops’ conference and a long-time member of the Sant’Egidio Community, was confirmed May 20 by Matteo…
The Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior (Migob) announced in official media the “voluntary dissolution” of the Immaculate Conception Catholic University of the Archdiocese of Managua (UCICAM), which functioned as a formation centre for seminarians from the Nicaraguan capital. According to ministerial agreement 77-2023-OSFL, published May 18 in La Gaceta, the regime’s official newspaper, the minister…
The Diocese of Irapuato in the Mexican state of Guanajuato expressed its “profound consternation” over a fire deliberately set at Santiaguito (St James) Church and called it a “sacrilege”. In a statement published May 15, Fr Efrén Silva Plascencia, spokesman for the diocese, said that the fire “was set on the exterior by a male…
The number of victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Poland between 1944 and 1990 may be close to 1,100 with the number of abusers close to 300. Those are, however, not the official findings of the Church in Poland. On March 15, the bishops announced they will create a commission of experts…