The new promoter of justice at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said the news media did the Church a service by uncovering the clerical abuse scandal. “I think that certainly those who continued to put before us that we need to confront this problem did a service,” Father Robert Oliver Read more
An Irish Redemptorist priest at odds with the Vatican over his views on the nature of the priesthood has broken a period of silence imposed a year ago to claim he has been threatened with excommunication. At a press conference in Dublin, Fr Tony Flannery, 66, said he was “threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Read more
Jose Gomez has set a stunning example of what the church should be doing. ‘I FIND these files [about priests who sexually abused children] to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests Read more
The Vatican has dismissed a claim by Mehmet Ali Agca that his assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1983 was ordered by the late Iranian Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini. In an autobiography, the would-be assassin claims he was trained by Iranian forces and given the mission to kill the Pontiff by the ayatollah Read more
The booklet being prepared by the Vatican to tell priests how to celebrate Mass well will discourage “showmanship” by the celebrant and novelties introduced to make the liturgy “entertaining” to the people. The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Cardinal Antonio Canizares, said the guidelines will help priests to “celebrate well and to participate Read more
In a move described by a Vatican representative as “an abuse of authority”, government authorities backed by the new Chinese leadership have withdrawn their recognition of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai. Bishop Ma has been under house arrest since he publicly resigned from the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association at his ordination Read more
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI launched his own Twitter feed this week (Dec. 3) to worldwide media coverage — it’s hard to resist the story of an octogenarian pontiff mixing it up with the digerati — and to considerable acclaim from church insiders. The praise was understandable. After the spate of missteps that have Read more
The Vatican has denied a report that a special commission investigating the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje will release its findings during December. A French journal, La Vie, had reported that the Medjugorje commission appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in March 2010, and chaired by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, would present its report to the Pope by Read more
The Bishop of Waikato has been appointed as the Anglican Church’s representative to the Catholic Church. Archbishop David Moxon is currently the Bishop of Waikato, Senior Bishop of the New Zealand Dioceses and an Archbishop of the Anglican Church in New Zealand and Polynesia. He will step down from these roles in April and expects Read more
The Catholic Church in the Vatican and in the Holy Land welcomed a United Nations vote on November 29 to accept Palestine as a non-member observer state. But the Vatican called for the further steps of a sovereign independent homeland for the Palestinian people and an internationally guaranteed special statute for the city of Jerusalem. Read more