News
-
At a House leadership news conference Jan. 27, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California announced a list of bills to combat human trafficking that he expected would pass the House of Representatives by week's end.
"Human trafficking affects so many of the vulnerable throughout the world," said McCarthy, so "we have 12 bills, bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats, to protect the most vulnerable out there."
He said in the week ahead, the House would be "strong on legislation...
-
Father John Garvey, a priest of the Orthodox Church and longtime Commonweal columnist, who died Jan. 20, "had a rare capacity for conversation, and especially for listening," said veteran religion writer Peter Steinfels.
A former executive editor of the New York-based lay Catholic journal of opinion, Steinfels made the comments in a Jan. 26 appreciation of the priest, whom he had asked to become a regular columnist after Father Garvey "brushed off" an offer to join the staff.
-
A Greek Catholic leader welcomed his country's new anti-austerity government and predicted Catholics would benefit from changes.
"Although the interests and concerns of churches like ours will be secondary for the new government, I think we can be optimistic our possibilities will improve," said Archbishop Nikolaos Printezis, general secretary of Greece's six-member bishops' conference.
"This is something very new in our country's history—we must be patient in seeing the...
-
After almost two centuries in New York City, the nonprofit American Bible Society is moving its headquarters to Philadelphia.
“New York has become so extraordinarily expensive that nonprofit staff cannot afford to live in proximity to headquarters,” said Roy Peterson, the society’s president and CEO. “We don’t have a cohesive, synergistic global headquarters staff right now. And that’s why we wanted to find a city that was diverse, rich with culture and churches and language, but yet...
-
February 9, 2015
A group of Catholic leaders urged fellow Catholics in Congress to set aside “partisan bickering” and support the U.S. bishops’ efforts on behalf of a comprehensive immigration reform, calling it a sanctity of life issue and an important step in building a culture of life. “Our nation’s inhumane and flawed immigration policies leave migrant women, children and families abandoned by the side of the road,” the group said in a letter released on Jan. 20, two...
-
February 9, 2015
An increasingly influential German cardinal spoke to a packed auditorium at Stanford University on Jan. 15 about the challenge of organizing a free and open society that is linked with the common good. “It is important for the church to be in the great questions of social justice,” said Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German bishops’ conference and part of the nine-member Council of Cardinals that advises Pope Francis on church governance.
-
February 9, 2015
Using a phrase long associated with the civil rights movement, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley. O.F.M.Cap., of Boston told an overflow crowd in Washington, D.C. “We shall overcome” in the fight against abortion. In his homily on Jan. 21 during the opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life, Cardinal O’Malley said, quoting Pope Francis,“The church cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for a better world.”
-
February 9, 2015
On the weekend after President Obama’s historic announcement on Dec. 17 that he wanted to re-establish diplomatic ties with communist Cuba, I visited a park in Miami’s Little Havana section.
-
February 9, 2015
Minneapolis on Jan. 16 became the 12th U.S. Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy protection because of the unmanageable costs of settlements and future claims resulting from sexual abuse by clergy. • The number of people falling victim to the Ebola virus in West Africa—where at least 8,668 have died—has fallen to the lowest level in months, the World Health Organization said on Jan. 23, warning that dwindling funds and the coming rainy...
-
February 9, 2015
Families who have many children do not cause poverty, Pope Francis said. The main culprit is “an economic system that has removed the human person from its focus and has placed the god of money” as its priority instead, he said on Jan. 21. On the flight back from Manila to Rome, the pope had told journalists on Jan.