Pope Francis has announced a Jubilee Year of Mercy in order to celebrate God’s forgiveness. The “extraordinary Holy Year” will take place from December 8, 2015, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, to November 20, 2016, the Feast of Christ the King. Announcing the closing date, the Pope added a new term to the title Read more
Professor Tracey Rowland is the Dean and Permanent Fellow of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Melbourne, Australia. In 2003, she published Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II, establishing herself as a bold, fresh voice in international Catholic theological circles. A member of the editorial Read more
While in Dublin recently, I stopped by the Jesuit community at Milltown to meet a man who had once taught Scripture in a huge college outside Buenos Aires, which was at that time run by the man who is now pope. Father James Kelly recalls the regime at the Colegio Maximo in the early 1980s Read more
Pope Francis on Sunday condemned two suicide attacks on churches in Pakistan and accused the world of “seeking to hide” the persecution of Christians. Fourteen people were killed and more than 70 were injured when two Taliban suicide bombers attacked the churches in Lahore on Sunday. At his weekly Angelus address, Pope Francis said it Read more
Pope Francis has said that if he is assassinated or attacked, he has asked God to spare him physical pain. In an interview with Buenos Aires favela publication La Carcova News, the Pope said he had asked the Lord to take care of him. “But if your will is that I die or that they Read more
Pope Francis has called on theologians not to settle for the “theology of the desk”, but to “smell of the people and of the road”. In a letter to the theological faculty of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, the Pope used language he had previously applied to pastors. According to an article in the National Read more
Wellington’s Cardinal, John Dew, has been quoted in David Gibson’s U.S.Catholic blog which has also appeared in the Washington Post, Pope Francis has history, but not time, on his side in reform push. “There would be some people who would want to return” to the old ways, said Dew. But, “if things were to be Read more
Pope Francis has made no secret of his conviction that human-induced climate change, along with other forms of environmental degradation, represents a grave threat to humanity’s future. At times he even speaks in quasi-apocalyptic terms: “Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world!” His forthcoming “ecological encyclical” Read more
Pope Francis, is, according to Cardinal Walter Kasper – a Swabian formerly responsible for ecumenism – neither a traditionalist nor a liberal – “both of which categories have become rather timeworn and hackneyed” – but rather a radical who wants to advance a revolution of forgiveness. Well, that’s what Christians are kind of for, even Read more
Pope Francis has moved to confirm the authority of Cardinal George Pell in cleaning up the Vatican’s finances. In a new set of legislative norms approved by the Pope, the Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Cardinal Pell, has been given sweeping powers. Francis appears to have largely put aside recommendations from the Pontifical Council Read more