Pope Francis said Wednesday he didn’t understand why people refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines, saying “humanity has a history of friendship with vaccines,” and that serene discussion about the shots was necessary to help them. “Even in the College of Cardinals, there are some negationists,” Francis said Wednesday, en route home from Slovakia. He noted Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Pope Francis’
Vatican mum on whether women can vote in 2023 synod
Thursday, September 9th, 2021
Vatican officials are not saying whether women can vote in the 2023 synod of bishops on concrete proposals about the future of the Catholic Church. By 2023 the two-year synodal path process Pope Francis will formally open next month will be complete. For years, women, including nuns, have pressed to be able to vote at Read more
Pope Francis is preparing a radical reform of the church’s power structures
Monday, September 6th, 2021
In 2001, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was a rapporteur for the summit of bishops at the Vatican — and he did not like what he saw. The Catholic Church had adopted a top-to-bottom approach that stripped local churches of any decision-making power, and the synod of bishops was reduced to nothing more than a stamp of Read more
Commission for female deacons to hold first meeting
Thursday, August 26th, 2021
It is almost two years since Pope Francis said he would re-form the commission on female deacons. Although he announced the new members’ names in April 2020, their meetings have been delayed as a result of COVID 19. On Monday, however, the new commission confirmed it will hold its first meeting in Rome in the Read more
Pope Francis gets a new toy
Thursday, August 19th, 2021Pope Francis has received dozens of soccer jerseys and game balls during his eight-year pontificate but he got a new football-themed toy on Wednesday: his very own foosball table. Read more
Pope acts fast to accept sex video bishop’s resignation
Thursday, August 19th, 2021
The Vatican’s mills usually grind slowly, but the Pope acted fast in accepting a Brazilian bishop’s resignation days after a sexually explicit video spread on social media. The video featured someone resembling and purporting to be the bishop. Sao Paulo’s Bishop Tomé Ferreira da Silva’s name has already been connected with a number of serious Read more
Pope starring in major COVID vax advert
Thursday, August 19th, 2021
A major new international ad campaign stars Pope Francis going hard promoting the COVID vax. The vaccination is “an act of love,” he says. “Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19! They bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are Read more
Fears synodal process will stifle lay Catholic voices
Monday, August 16th, 2021
The process for identifying issues to be discussed at the 2023 global Synod of bishops will stifle lay Catholic voices all over the world, a group of lay Catholics in the UK says. The group is speaking out as they organise an upcoming lay-led diocesan synod. The synod’s aim is to feed ideas to bishops Read more
Nostalgia is the ‘siren song of religious life’
Monday, August 16th, 2021
One of the issues for today’s religious, is that many men and women in religious life can be tempted to focus on the decline in numbers of vocations in their orders. Francis made the comments to an online conference on religious life in Latin America. Urging the religious to renounce the criterion of declining numbers Read more
The climate apocalypse is real, and it is coming
Thursday, August 12th, 2021
Scientists are warning us that because of global warming, civilization is headed toward the worst catastrophe in human history. Unlike a war, a pandemic or a depression, this is not a disaster we can recover from in a few decades. This is a calamity that will take centuries, if not millennia, to recover from, if Read more