There is serious talk of forming a new centre-right Catholic party in the wake of the clash between the Church and the philandering Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi according to this interesting report by the Times in London At the centre of the attempt to create a new Christian Democrat bloc is

Fans of the monk writer Thomas Merton are often surprised to find how low in the esteem of other monks he was sometimes held In the fascinating memoir by Rembert Weakland OSB former Abbot Primate of the Benedictines and Archbishop of Milwaukee until his dramatic resignation in 2004 you find for

Two regional directors of the Legionaries of Christ -- which is not quite the same as their Director General -- have apologised to the sexual abuse victims of the organisation s founder Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado and say that the Legion is on a long road of healing and reconciliation with those

The editor of a widely-read Italian daily newspaper owned by the bishops has resigned after a week of vitriolic attacks on him by powerful relatives and allies of Silvio Berlusconi the erratic authoritarian 72-year-old premier Dino Boffo s crime was to have criticised in the pages of Avvenire B

Relations between the Church and the disgraced Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi are fast dropping below zero Scheduled talks with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone -- the Pope s number two -- have been cancelled following extraordinary attacks by Il Giornale owned by Berlusconi s brother Paolo on the ed

Troubling scenes in a northern Spanish village on the route to Santiago de Compostela whose 46 inhabitants have driven out Benedictine monks following a dispute over the restoration of the village church The ABC newspaper has the story The details of the saga -- the monks want to make nbsp chang

Reading Tony Blair s speech to the Communion and Liberation meeting in Rimini in which he comments approvingly on Caritas in Veritate and talks of Faith in much the same way that Encyclical does I can t help rubbing my eyes thinking Imagine him saying this when he was Prime Minister Maybe you

Jon Sobrino the Spanish Jesuit theologian based in El Salvador says the delay in the process of beatification of Oscar Romero is essentially political namely fear of its impact on the Vatican s relations with the Central-American state The martyred Archbishop of San Salvador gunned down at the

A 50-year-old woman suffering from a form of motor neurone disease who has been wheelchair-bound since 2005 now walks again after bathing in Lourdes -- and her doctor is stunned The Italian press is carrying the story -- eg Corriere here -- and there s Spanish coverage here As usual such stories

Simmering tensions between the Church and the Italian Right over immigration spilled out over the weekend after the Italian bishops joined UN criticism of the way international ships recently left 73 Africans on a raft to die of dehydration ignoring their pleas for help Only five survived The bis