Churches are among the high risk places to avoid at present, say public health professor Nick Wilson and epidemiologist Michael Baker (pictured). As daily Omicron cases soar throughout the country, avoiding high risk places means steering clear of bars, restaurants, cafés, gyms, churches and protests. Retail shops, offices, lifts, stairwells, malls, community pools, public transport Read more
Russia is putting humanity in danger, the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said on Tuesday. “Today all of humanity has been placed in danger — that the powerful have a right to impose themselves on whomever they wish, with no regard for the rule of law,” he said. “It is Read more
With Omicron spreading at an alarming rate, one South Auckland church leader is calling on fellow priests and ministers to put their hands up to help those needing to self-isolate. A defining feature of Māngere in South Auckland is the number of large churches. The suburb is also full of sleep-outs, converted garages and portable Read more
St Mary’s Church in Carterton is due to be sold by tender, with many local Catholics feeling they have been kept in the dark. The sale is being managed on behalf of the diocese by Peter McCardle, chairman of the Wairarapa catholic finance committee. Tenders closed 24 February. McCardle said that parish priests had been Read more
Wellington’s St Mary’s College is the second school adjacent to the parliamentary protest to close due to ongoing fears for its students’ and staff’s safety. The school will be closed until Tuesday 1 March. Wellington Girls’ College has also announced it will be shut until at least then, with the school citing an ‘increasingly volatile’ Read more
In the history of the papacy, Benedict XVI marks a caesura or a break, something quite ironic, given the fact that many traditionalist Catholics identify his pontificate with the “hermeneutics of continuity”. This caesura is not only tied to his decision in 2013 to voluntarily resign the papal office but even more so to the Read more
Pope Francis unveiled new changes to Church law in an apostolic letter published on Tuesday, saying that he was seeking to promote a ‘healthy decentralisation’ in the Church. In the motu proprio (“on his own impulse”), the pope said his intention with the changes was to “foster a sense of collegiality and pastoral responsibility” on Read more
Catholic Archbishop Paul Martin, the current Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Christchurch, accepts that survivors want the church to take responsibility for historical abuse cases and not just leave it to the particular order involved. He made the comment at the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care inquiry investigating historical abuse by the St Read more
New Zealand’s Catholic bishops and the new law on conversion therapy are in sync. The bishops’ submission to parliament supported the bill’s aims as being in line with the Catholic Social Teaching principles of human dignity and the common good. “Any harmful, coercive or abusive practice under any name is abhorrent to the Church and Read more
The declining number of believers in Europe, the Church’s struggle to continue playing a role in Western society, the debate over priestly celibacy and new views about sexuality… Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich – the 63-year-old Jesuit who leads the Archdiocese of Luxembourg and who is president of COMECE (the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the Read more