The US National Security Agency has denied reports in an Italian magazine that the Vatican has been a target of its spying activities. “Assertions that the [National Security Agency] has targeted the Vatican, published in Italy’s Panorama magazine, are not true,” an NSA spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times. Citing a document purportedly furnished by Read more
Pope Francis gained a doting new fan on the weekend when a young boy wandered onto the stage during a speech to thousands of pilgrims in St Peter’s Square. The unidentified child shook off cardinals as they tried to lead him away, and turned down bribes of candy in favour of clinging to the Pope’s Read more
Pope Francis will call a consistory next February to bestow red hats on a group of new cardinals, a news agency has reported. The Rome-based French religious agency I-Media says the consistory will be on February 21 and 22, following a two-day meeting of the Pope with the entire College of Cardinals to discuss his Read more
The sacrament of marriage is “not just a pretty ceremony” — through it a couple receive from God the grace they will need to fulfill their mission in the world, Pope Francis has told a Pilgrimage for Families. The pilgrimage, organised for the Year of Faith, attracted more than 100,000 people to St Peter’s Square. Read more
During a meeting with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Pope Francis has expressed his support for her commitment towards democracy in her country. While the Pope assured the Nobel Peace Prize winner of the Church’s support for her cause, he specified that the Church does not show discrimination but is at the service Read more
The other night I was drinking with an American Catholic nun and her daughter.The mother had been married twice, once to a former priest. She had entered a convent straight out of high school and left to marry her high school sweetheart eight years later. Some time after the second marriage broke down and her Read more
Pope Francis has gained 10 million followers on Twitter — in nine different language accounts. The Pope’s Spanish-language tweets are re-tweeted an average of 11,116 times. His English-language tweets are re-tweeted by an average of 8219 followers. On Oct. 27, Pope Francis tweeted, “Dear Followers I understand there are now over 10 million of you! Read more
“Pope Francis is not a politically-correct pope,” rather, he is “a loyal son of the church” who presents the hard truths with a heavy dose of mercy, said Greg Burke, senior communications adviser to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. He said Pope Francis clearly knows how to communicate and his effectiveness comes from his authenticity. Read more
“Bishop Bling-Bling” – moniker of suspended bishop of LimburgFranz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, is just the tip of the iceberg according to Christian Weisner, spokesman for the German branch of “We Are Church”. “There is a real clash of cultures between Germany’s current cardinals and bishops, nominated under John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis,” Read more
Perplexed by Pope Francis’s habit of making off-the-cuff remarks, many conservatives in the United States are openly questioning his statements. “Behind the growing scepticism is the fear in some quarters that Francis’s all-embracing style and spontaneous speech, so open as it is to interpretation, are undoing decades of Church efforts to speak clearly on Catholic Read more