A McDonalds restaurant will open inside a Vatican building just around the corner from St. Peter’s Square. After many requests from different companies to move into the empty space, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which oversees the Vatican’s assets, decided to rent it to McDonald’s for 30,000 euros a month. Read more
All Black great Sean Fitzpatrick joined world sports representatives at the Vatican last week at the first-ever global conference on faith and sport Both Fitzpatrick and Argentinian rugby star Hugo Porta spoke at the three-day conference, where the Sport in Service of Humanity project was launched. The project aims to unite people from every faith, nationality Read more
That the Catholic Church needs a better way to select Bishops is a sentiment that every Catholic, I think, could agree with. It is the headline of an article by Robert Mickens in the National Catholic Reporter, which is worth reading for the way it summarises the Pope’s recurring harsh words about bad bishops. The Read more
A clerical sexual abuse survivor’s suggestion has led the Pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors to adopt a Day of Prayer for victims of sexual abuse. Pope Francis announced the Day of Prayer on Monday, following a week-long meeting of the Commission. The Commission, has a mandate to develop and educate the church about Read more
A sex education program recently released by the Vatican has been condemned by a renowned psychiatrist who has worked with victims of priestly sexual abuse and priest abusers. He says it is abusive and “the most dangerous threat to Catholic youth” he has seen in the past 40 years. The gravely concerned psychiatrist is Dr. Read more
Vice President Chen Chien-jen attended the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta on 4 September at the Vatican, describing the event as representing the universal values of peace, love, mercy and humanitarianism that the Republic of China (ROC) and Holy See share and put into practice. The Holy See is an important ally that has Read more
Cardinal Raymond Burke, a traditionalist American prelate who has worked in senior positions in Rome for most of the past decade and has consistently opposed the Pope’s reforms ever since Francis was elected in 2013, says he’s not the Pope’s enemy. Francis eventually moved Burke out of key Vatican jobs and into a more ceremonial Read more
A sex education guide from the Vatican seeks to avoid approaches that teach either too much about human sexuality to impressionable youth or too little. The move by the Pontifical Council for the Family came amid the frenzy of World Youth Day, which gathered millions of young people in Krakow, Poland at the end of Read more
The Vatican has called on the international community to expand the definition of a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ to include “devastatingly powerful conventional weapons used to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity.” “Conventional weapons are becoming less and less ‘conventional’ as technological advances elevate their power to destroy to the level of weapons of Read more
Bishop Kevin Farrell will lead the Vatican’s newly created mega-department on the family, laity, and life issues. The new office is part of Francis’ attempt to reform the Roman Curia, meaning the government of the Catholic Church. Born in Ireland in 1947, Farrell has served as bishop of Dallas since 2007. Starting Sept. 1, he’ll Read more