In the summer before the Second Vatican Council opened, Pope John XXIII met with Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens in the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. “I know what my part in the Council will be,” the Pope told the Belgian archbishop. “It will be to suffer.” Pope John was prescient, and not just because the Council’s opening weeks would prove contentious; shortly before Vatican II began its work, the Pope was diagnosed with the painful cancer that would kill him in less than a year.
This past June 25, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States — usually dubbed the “Vatican’s foreign minister” — told a press conference that he and his colleagues didn’t believe that the Vatican’s speaking out publicly on the massive repression underway in Hong Kong “would make any difference whatever.”
In the three decades since the Revolution of 1989, Poland’s many cultural achievements include mastering the craft of creating the 21st-century historical museum.
In his pastoral exhortation “The Joy of Love” — or Amoris Laetitia — which he encourages us to review and reflect on in its fifth anniversary and on the occasion of the Year of the Family under the patronage of St. Joseph, the Roman Pontiff offers important advice on how parents should carry out such tremendous responsibility.
On the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2013, Pope Francis completed the work of the 2012 Synod of Bishops with the apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), issuing a ringing call for the entire Church to “embark on a new chapter of evangelization.” Catholicism, the Pope urged, must move from maintenance to mission: “from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry.”
Given everything else going on these days, it may seem strange that a 129-year-old encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, founding father of modern Catholic social doctrine, should have become a shuttlecock in the volleys exchanged by conservative Ameri- can legal theorists and commentators.
Thanks to the pandemic, it’s been two years since I was last in Krakow, where for three decades I’ve done extensive research and taught great students while forming friendships with many remarkable people.
The Holy Father, Pope Francis, issued a Motu Proprio (a document issued by the Pope himself which has a legal effect in the Church) on July 16, 2021, called “Traditionis Custodes” (The “Guardians of the Tradition”).
Brooklyn Priests marched in solidarity with the people of Biafra to say no to injustice, nepotism, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing by the Nigerian Government against the Indigenous people of Biafra.
My encounter with the widow with four eggs early on in my priesthood has taught me a great lesson in my ministry. That happened way back when I was sent to a mission area on an island in the tropics.
