Perhaps you are wondering, “What is Laudato Si’ Week?” And for that matter, what does Laudato Si’ mean? Laudato Si’ is medieval Italian for “Praise be to you.” It is a quote from St. Francis of Assisi’s beautiful Canticle of the Creatures: “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains Read more
The Anglican Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, was in Rome this week. It is his first official visit to the Anglican Centre and the Holy See. Cottrell said he felt encouraged to have met people within the Roman Catholic Church leadership after meeting Pope Francis at the Anglican Centre on Monday. His audience with Francis Read more
If G7 nations expect Global South support for the Ukraine War, they must give something back in return says Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam. Lawson says the G7 needs to cancel Global South debts, end hunger and pay up for climate damage. Lawson spoke out after the G7 met in Hiroshima last Read more
Charity – caritas – is our very life; it is what makes us “be” what we are. When we embrace God’s love and when we love one another in him, we plumb the depths of our identity, as individuals and as Church, and the meaning of our existence. We understand not only how important our own lives are, but Read more
Picking the Pope’s successor was at the top of Cardinal George Pell’s to do list in the weeks before his death. He was secretly promoting someone very different from Francis. Hungarian writer and polemicist Rod Dreher says Pell told him he was “so in favour” of conservative Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo (pictured) as Francis’s successor. Read more
A grey and drizzly Rome was under an intense security lockdown on Saturday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to town for the day. The Italian government deployed some 1,500 security agents, stationed snipers on rooftops, and enforced a no-fly zone for the visit of the president whose country continues to fight the troops from Read more
Questions about young people and how to engage with them were the focus of Pope Francis’s conversation with Hungarian Jesuits last month. “How do we best engage with young people?” he was asked. “For me the key word is testimony,” Francis responded. “Without testimony, without witnessing, nothing can be done. “You end up like that Read more
Making reparation to clergy sex abuse survivors is critical, Pope Francis told the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on Friday. “The sexual abuse of minors by clergy and its poor handling by Church leaders has been one of the greatest challenges for the Church in our time. “Now is the time to repair Read more
Pope Francis has returned from touring Hungary, a bastion of European conservatism, where his mixed messaging is seemingly at odds with national sentiment. At a Mass celebrated Sunday in Budapest, His Holiness called on the Hungarian government — led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and President Katalin Novák, both Christian, neither Catholic — to loosen Read more
Lay people, especially women, will benefit from the Pope’s decision to expand those allowed to vote in the Synod on Synodality’s concluding discussions to include women, say leading Asian theologians. They agree the decision will compel Asia’s national churches to widen male and female lay Catholics’ participation in Church activities. The ruling means “the universal Read more