Francis met on Friday, February 2, with the participants in a conference on ways of combating religious violence. Chaldean patriarch Sako, “In Iraq, churches and mosques are attacked”
For anyone who knows Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 86-year-old “Lion in Winter” of Chinese Catholicism, it will be no surprise that he recently took to Facebook to accuse the Vatican of “selling out” the Church in China by reportedly asking for the resignations of two underground bishops in order to make way for government-appointed candidates.
Zen has a long history of advocating for a harder line from Rome on China’s Communist authorities and their efforts to exercise control over the Church, especially in the selection of bishops.
Interview with the Secretary of State who responds to the accusations made against the Holy See regarding the ongoing contacts, “We trust that the Chinese faithful, thanks to their spirit of faith, will know how to recognize that our action is animated by trust in the Lord and does not answer to worldly logic”.
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The document “Veritatis Gaudium” insists on open-confrontation in all fields, on interdisciplinarity, and asks ecclesiastical universities to network and build” “leadership capable of striking out on new paths” for “changing the models of global development”.
Nowadays, it is likely that all of us know at least someone, if not multiple persons, who have had their lives affected by cancer. For Anthony Maranise, author of the new book, Cross of a Different Kind: Cancer & Christian Spirituality, this is certainly true. Maranise, now in his twentieth year of remission from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, was diagnosed, treated, and cured at St Jude Children's Research Hospital, a worldwide leader in pediatric cancer and catastrophic disease research and treatment, located in the Southern United States from October 1994 to April 1997.
Pope Francis receives the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which, among other things, is about to conclude a study on the ethical implications “in the economic-financial field”.
Stories of cohabitation between believers in Christ and Muslims. Journey to Dakar to discover the friendly relationships between the two communities, for which hospitality is a fundamental value
The Cardinal and Prefect of the Clergy interviewed in the book “Tutti gli uomini di Francesco”, speaks of this hypothesis for the Amazon and some Pacific islands, “We would recover a structure which already existed in the early Church. Celibacy is not in question”
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“I apologies if I have hurt the victims of abuse with my words on the Barros case”. Pope Francis, answering the journalists’ questions on the flight from Lima back to Rome, admits that he made a mistake in expressing himself on the case of Juan Barros, the Chilean bishop of Osorno, challenged by groups of faithful in his diocese who believe he was aware of the sexual abuse committed by his mentor Father Fernando Karadima and that he had covered them up.
After three trying days in Chile, facing a sex abuse crisis and several layers of political tension, not to mention the specter of churches being attacked while he was in town, Pope Francis might be forgiven for hoping he could throttle back a bit as he heads to Peru on Thursday.
And in many ways, the atmosphere is more relaxed. The welcome Pope Francis received in Lima on Thursday night, for instance, was marked by a ceremony full of honors - diametrically different from the one he received in Santiago, that was perfunctory at best.
