After a bishop pleaded guilty today in an Ottowa court of possessing child pornography -- 588 images 60 videos -- the Vatican said it will be following canonical procedures against him resulting in the appropriate disciplinary or penal measures Given that Raymond Lahey stood down as head of t

Judging by their thrilled tweets in many languages the first ever Vatican-hosted bloggers conference yesterday was a great success Quite what it will lead to nobody seems to know but the verdict was that building a bridge between Rome and the Catho-blogosphere will bear much future fruit and th

Pope John Paul II was declared blessed in Rome today before a sea of people stretching from St Peter s back to the Tiber under skies lit by a sun emerging from a cold cloudy morning The Poles as expected dominated the square but every part of the world was represented at this tribute to the f

Because I live only 15 minutes walk from Westminster Abbey where tomorrow in case you missed this Prince William is to marry Catherine Middleton and not much further from Buckingham Palace where after the service they will appear on the balcony to kiss it has been pretty hard to avoid the hub

I m filing for next week s America on the world s first Ordinariate which is swelling in these days from 20 members to over 1 000 including 64 priests as former Anglicans are received into the Catholic Church in England and Wales in low-key ceremonies across the nation A whole new chapter in the

Who said the Church was closed to the media Yesterday a newspaper article was approved by the Vatican for inclusion in the Office of Readings the prayer which begins the universal Church s daily liturgy nbsp True the reading for November 4th has only been approved by the Vatican s Congregation

Since Fr Jim s excellent post earlier on the problem of incivility in the Catholic blogosphere John Allen has written intriguingly at NCR about the need to overcome what he calls tribal Catholicism - the fragmentation of the Church which he says means increasingly we re becoming strangers to o

An extremely funny -- and alarming -- piece by the actor Hugh Grant has been posted at the New Statesman which tells the story of how he secretly taped a conversation with a tabloid journalist about phone-hacking Read The bugger bugged in all its glory here The joy of the piece is that the

France s ban on full-face veils came into force yesterday meaning that women who cover their faces with a burqa a full-body covering that includes a mesh window over the face or a niqab a face scarf that leaves an opening for the eyes might have to pay 150 euros for wearing them in public As

London Yesterday in Westminster around 200 Catholic bishops charity directors politicians Lords academics and thinkers gathered under the ponderous title of Renewing a sense of social responsibility to consider how the Church in England and Wales should respond to a new era in the economy an