News
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A year has past in a heartbeat, but the papal honeymoon shows no sign of letting up. Pope Francis remains immensely popular among American Catholics and is widely seen as a force for positive change within the Roman Catholic Church. That’s according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project. Pew reports that more than eight-in-ten U.S. Catholics say they have a favorable view of the pontiff, including half who view him very favorably.
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Jesuit Father James Martin today has a hard time believing that he initially turned down a suggestion to go to Jerusalem as source material for his newest book, "Jesus: A Pilgrimage."
"Initially, I didn't want to go because I thought my own mental images of Gospel passages and stories that I'd prayed over for years and years would be supplanted by touristy locales," Father Martin said.
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Pope Francis suggested the Catholic Church could tolerate some types of nonmarital civil unions as a practical measure to guarantee property rights and health care. He also said the church would not change its teaching against artificial birth control but should take care to apply it with "much mercy."
Pope Francis' words appeared in an interview published March 5 in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
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March 17, 2014
Nigeria is in a state of shock after the killing of 59 students at a government-run college by Boko Haram Islamic militants in the northeastern state of Yobe during the night of Feb. 25. Two days later another attack on a village claimed 12 more lives. During the school attack, the militants spared the girls but set fire to the dormitory where the boys were sleeping. Those trying to escape were killed in cold blood. Residents claim security forces withdrew...
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March 17, 2014
The Catholic Church needs to find a way to offer healing, strength and salvation to Catholics whose marriages have failed, who are committed to making a new union work and who long to do so within the church and with the grace of Communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper told the world’s cardinals. Pope Francis had asked Cardinal Walter Kasper, a well-known theologian and author of a book on mercy as a fundamental trait of God, to introduce a discussion on Feb. 20-...
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March 17, 2014
A cease-fire that seemed to offer a chance for a peaceful resolution to months-long conflict in the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, has unraveled. Intermittent fighting has continued since the cease-fire agreement was signed on Jan. 23. But now in Malakal, a key city in an oil-producing region in the country’s northeast, government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir are in more or less open combat with rebel groups loosely arrayed behind former Vice...
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March 17, 2014
“The church in the United States has a moral and ethical imperative to protect human dignity and must address the problem of mass incarceration in our nation,” the leaders of Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A. said in a statement issued on Feb. 7 in Newark, N.J. The coalition includes the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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March 17, 2014
Father Wissam Akiki became the first married man to be ordained a priest for the U.S. Maronite Catholic Church on Feb. 27 at St. Raymond’s Maronite Cathedral in St. Louis, Mo. • Thousands lined up at the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus on Feb. 24 in hope of receiving one of the 450 family food parcels handed out by U.N. relief workers. • A survey released Feb. 26, conducted by the Public Religion and Research Institute in...
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March 17, 2014
In a speech to the Congregation for Bishops, Pope Francis said bishops should act not like ambitious corporate executives but as humble evangelists and men of prayer, willing to sacrifice everything for their flocks. “We don’t need a manager, the C.E.O. of a business, nor someone who shares our pettiness or low aspirations,” the pope said on Feb. 27.
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Church leaders in Ukraine appealed for peace in their country's Crimea peninsula as its government accused Russia of "carrying out an armed invasion."
The pleas came soon after several hundred camouflage-wearing troops without insignia and armed with military-style rifles entered and secured areas of the civilian airport in Crimea's regional capital of Simerfopol Feb. 27 and patrolled elsewhere in the autonomous region of Ukraine.