Background: Illinois is the latest state to detail decades of abuse. Attorneys general and grand juries in a number of states have investigated sexual abuse in the church, including an investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore that was released last month. The many investigations were inspired by a sweeping report in 2018 on six dioceses […]
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“You can’t wear that flamenco dress for the El Rocío pilgrimage, Bonita,” Maria Cárdenas, our Airbnb host, said with a laugh. “You’ll die in the heat.” She pinched the thick red fabric between her thumb and held it up to my face like a specimen. “You see? Heavy tight dresses like this are made for […]
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ROME — A secret mission revealed days ago by Pope Francis to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine is so secret that Russia and Ukraine claim to know nothing about it. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it had no idea what the pope was talking about. “Ukraine doesn’t know about it,” Ukraine’s ambassador to […]
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BUDAPEST — Pope Francis said on Sunday that the Vatican was involved in a secret “mission” to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine and that it would do “all that is humanly possible” to return children taken from Ukraine to Russia and reunite families. The pope’s remarks to reporters aboard the papal plane returning […]
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BUDAPEST — Pope Francis, who has made welcoming migrants, embracing minorities and warning against nationalism central tenets of his pontificate, visited Budapest for the second time in less than two years on Friday. The trip gives Prime Minister Viktor Orban, perhaps Europe’s chief opponent of migrants, closest ally of Russia and most vocal critic of […]
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When Pope Francis lands in Budapest on Friday, Eduard Habsburg, Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See and a descendant of the defunct Habsburg dynasty that once ruled much of Europe, will greet him on the tarmac with a gag gift. The ambassador intends to hand the visiting pontiff a Spanish-Hungarian dictionary, continuing a running joke […]
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The Synod of Bishops is a religious assembly of bishops from all over the world who gather in Rome to discuss issues vital to the Roman Catholic Church and act as an advisory body to the pope. The word synod means “coming together.” It stems from ancient Greek, and is a combination of the word […]
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The Vatican announced on Wednesday that the pope would for the first time allow women to vote at a coming meeting of bishops, a fresh sign of Francis’ efforts to give women more say in the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church. The pope also increased the number of laypeople who will participate next October […]
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On weekday mornings, Mark Lynn, 10, walks past the 40-foot-tall metal fence looming over his backyard at the edge of his predominantly Catholic neighborhood in Belfast, and heads to his Catholic school, its crest displayed prominently on his blue sweater. On the other side of the fence, children in the mostly Protestant Shankill neighborhood walk […]
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ROME — Pope Francis liked the floor plan. “It’s a good space you have,” the pope, mapping out a square with his hands, said during a private audience last month to the Rev. Andrew Small, who manages the pope’s commission on combating sex abuse. “Have you moved yet?” Since Francis created his Commission for the […]
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An Oklahoma state education board could vote as early as Tuesday on whether to approve the nation’s first religious charter school, potentially setting up a high-profile national legal battle over whether taxpayer money can be used to directly fund religious schools. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa are seeking […]
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Twenty-five years ago, Britain and Ireland signed the Good Friday Agreement, ending decades of bloodshed known as the Troubles. At the stroke of a pen, Northern Ireland became one of the world’s most ambitious experiments in how to reconcile a deeply divided society. Even now, remnants of separation between Protestant and Catholic Northern Ireland linger: […]
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Pope Francis wearing a long, white puffer jacket inspired by Balenciaga. Francis rocking aviators and revving a motorcycle down a busy street. Francis turning the tables in a dim nightclub. Francis in a tactical vest, preparing to fly a fighter jet. Francis sharing a beer at Burning Man. Over the last few weeks, dozens of […]
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In the not-so-distant past where 90 or 95 percent of Americans identified as Christian, it was hard for almost anyone in that vast majority to read the Christian gospels naïvely — to come to them without preconceptions, in the way of their original intended audience, a person hearing the “good news” about Jesus of Nazareth […]
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Clergy members across the Archdiocese of Baltimore abused hundreds of children and teenagers over the course of six decades, abetted by a church hierarchy that systematically failed to investigate and restrict their access to children, according to a detailed report from the Maryland attorney general released on Wednesday. It was the latest harrowing installment in […]
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After a year of ever-closer cooperation between Poland and the United States to ensure the flow of Western weapons into Ukraine, the Polish Foreign Ministry last month summoned the U.S. ambassador in Warsaw to discuss an urgent matter: a television documentary about a dead pope, John Paul II. The documentary, which delved into the Polish-born […]
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Pope Francis is expected to be discharged from the hospital on Saturday, the Vatican said on Friday, after he was unexpectedly hospitalized earlier in the week for a respiratory infection, prompting concern worldwide. The Vatican said in a statement that the pope would be permitted to leave the hospital after undergoing some final tests on […]
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The Vatican formally repudiated on Thursday the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a legal concept based on 15th-century papal documents that European colonial powers used to legitimize the seizure and exploitation of Indigenous lands in Africa and the Americas, among other places. The decision comes after decades of demands from Indigenous people to rescind the doctrine, which […]
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ROME — Pope Francis went to a Rome hospital on Wednesday for planned medical tests, the Vatican said, raising concerns over the health of the pontiff, who is 86 and has a recent history of medical challenges. “The Holy Father has since this afternoon been at the Gemelli for some previously planned tests,” said the […]
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Thus Newman’s fellow English Catholic churchman Cardinal Henry Manning argued that the pope’s infallibility covered “all legislative or judicial acts, so far as they are inseparably connected with his doctrinal authority” and similarly that “laws of discipline, canonizations of saints, approbation of religious orders, of devotions, and the like” would all “intrinsically contain the truths […]
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Instead, Francis’ gambit involved a controversy much more clearly entangled with Catholic doctrine — the question of remarriage after divorce, where the very words of Jesus are at issue. Meanwhile, his larger approach has been to open controversies on the widest possible array of fronts: Sometimes through his statements, sometimes through his appointments, and for […]
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“The synod will be a beautiful moment,” said Cardinal Re, adding, “The pope has given a direction different from the past — certainly it is a journey that will bear fruit.” Some analysts have compared the meeting to a miniature Second Vatican Council — the landmark church assembly of bishops in the 1960s that opened […]
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Thirty years ago today, terrorists left a bomb weighing more than a half-ton in a rented van parked beneath the World Trade Center, a workplace for tens of thousands. Its smoldering fuse took about 12 minutes to close the gap between the everyday and the horrific. The lunchtime blast left a crater several stories deep, […]
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The authorities arrested a man on Monday in connection with the killing of David G. O’Connell, an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who was found fatally shot at his home on Saturday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. The suspect, Carlos Medina, 65, is married to Bishop O’Connell’s housekeeper and had […]
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ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis on Sunday doubled down on his assertion that homosexuality should not be criminalized, saying on the papal plane returning from South Sudan, a country that penalizes homosexual acts, that “to condemn a person like this is a sin.” But Francis, 86, also turned his attention back toward Rome, […]
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JUBA, South Sudan — On the last full day of his trip to Africa, Pope Francis met with the displaced South Sudanese who have borne the brunt of the conflict he came to help resolve by issuing blunt and insistent calls for leaders to get serious about peace. “I am with here you, and I […]
Read MoreEven the day’s painful afternoon meeting with the victims of gruesome crimes in the country’s embattled east, when survivors put machetes and knives on the floor near the pope to punctuate the horror of their accounts, seemed to remind him of his mission. “Thank you for these testimonies,” he said gravely. And on Thursday, the […]
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