The Pope’s safeguarding commission, preparing to move into a fresco-ceilinged palace in Rome’s historic centre, must not be merely engaged in “PR”, but become a refuge for those abused by clergy and silenced by the Church, said leading safeguarding expert Jesuit Fr Hans Zollner. Speaking to journalists April 17 about his decision to leave the…
One of the top military hospitals in the US says it is reviewing a Catholic pastoral care contract it awarded last month to a Virginia-based firm that specialises in providing government clients with industrial machinery, tactical gear, and janitorial supplies, in addition to chaplains and other religious staff. Franciscan friars at Holy Name College in nearby Silver…
At least 94 people reportedly have died in a series of deadly attacks on Christian communities throughout Holy Week in Benue state in north-central Nigeria, an ominous sign of escalating violence blamed on Muslim militias in the country’s Middle Belt region. On April 2, armed men reportedly stormed a Palm Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in…
The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has confiscated a cloistered monastery and arrested 20 people for activities related to Holy Week in Nicaragua. The Trappist sisters of Nicaragua, who left the country in February after 22 years of service, reported April 11 that the government verbally informed the…
Pope Francis has prayed that Christians would experience the joy of Easter and allow Christ’s resurrection to be “the light that illumines the darkness and the gloom in which, all too often, our world finds itself enveloped”. “In Jesus the decisive passage of humanity has been made: the passage from death to life, from sin…
Armed bandits killed one person and kidnapped more than 100 others in a March 14 raid on a predominantly Catholic town in north-central Nigeria, according to a Catholic priest and other local sources. Fr Dauda Musa Bahago, a coordinator for the Justice, Development, and Peace Commission, a Catholic aid organisation, told CNA the attack took place…
A Maltese Catholic priest who served as a chaplain in a London hospital received £10,000 (€11,396) in a settlement with the United Kingdom’s National Health Service after he alleged he was fired for expressing the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. Fr Patrick Pullicino, who is also a medical doctor, sued the London NHS Trust for harassment,…
The Vatican’s liturgy czar has intervened against the implementation of resolutions of the German ‘Synodal Way’ that demand laypeople should be able to regularly baptise and preach the homily at Mass in churches across Germany. In a letter to the German Bishops’ Conference president dated March 29, Cardinal Arthur Roche said neither was possible –…
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ, the archbishop of Luxembourg and a key leader of the Synod on Synodality, said the Catholic Church’s teaching on a male-only priesthood is not infallible and a future pope could allow women priests. The cardinal, 64, addressed the topic of the ordination of women, homosexuality, women in the Church, obedience to…
Pope Francis has updated the procedures for investigating allegations of sexual abuse or the cover up of abuse, specifying that the leaders of Vatican-recognised international Catholic lay associations and movements have the same responsibilities over their members that a bishop has over the priests of his diocese. The updated version of Vos Estis Lux Mundi…