While news agencies and Catholic social media denizens these days gorge themselves on the Vatican’s mounting “Battle of the Books,” seeing who can craft the most sensational headlines or tweets about several controversial new volumes making the rounds, other outfits are, thankfully, still concerned with things that actually matter.
Public criticism by cardinals and bishops is annoying — “like a rash that bothers you a bit,” Pope Francis said — but differences need to be aired and criticism can be helpful, he told the Associated Press.
The media and the field of communications need to exercise more kindness and share the truth with charity, Pope Francis said.
Catholic organizations applauded the announcement Jan. 19 of a new State Department program that allows groups of private individuals to directly support refugees resettling in the U.S.
As the Biden administration and state governments look at ways to expand or restrict access to abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, Pope Francis prayed that God would strengthen people’s commitment to protecting human life at every stage.
Sister André, a Daughter of Charity and the world’s oldest known person, died at age 118, a spokesman of the nursing home where she died told AFP agency on Tuesday.
Pope Francis asked Cubans “to make present in their hearts” the actions and words of St. John Paul II during his visit to their nation 25 years ago to “give a new push to building the country’s future with hope and determination.”
Deadly violence hit Christians in Africa Jan. 15, with a Catholic priest in northern Nigeria burned to death and as many as 17 Christians killed in a blast in eastern Congo.
At his Vatican funeral Saturday, the late Cardinal George Pell was praised for his “greatness of intellect and heart,” and, in an allusion to his conviction followed by eventual exoneration on sexual abuse charges in his native Australia, for bearing an “unjust and painful condemnation” with “dignity and interior peace.”
Pope Benedict XVI’s considerable influence will be seen and felt for decades after his passing, particularly in the leadership of the Catholic Church in the United States.
