An international virtual pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Lourdes, France, will “affirm the power of prayer” against COVID-19, said the shrine’s vice rector. “Lourdes is all about spiritual and physical healing, and we’ve received 15,000 prayer petitions daily throughout the lockdown from around the world – for people about to die or fearing infection,” said Father Xavier d’Arodes de Peyriague, vice rector and head of international pastoral ministry.
Decrying the unimaginable “hell” migrants experience in detention centers, Pope Francis urged all Christians to examine how they do or don’t help — as Jesus commanded — the people God has placed in their path.
In a nutshell, commentators and news outlets known to be critical of Pope Francis are styling the omission as the latest chapter in what they see as the Vatican’s appeasement of China and its Communist leadership, generally linking it to a deal signed two years ago and shortly up for review that afforded Chinese authorities a role in the nomination of Catholic bishops.
Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, a musician and retired Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother, died July 1 at the age of 96.
A report by the Washington-based Refugees International organization charges U.S. immigration policy with helping the spread of the coronavirus in Guatemala, as federal agencies in the U.S. and Mexico have repatriated infected Guatemalans through deportations.
In a set of updated guidelines for catechesis released June 25, the Vatican weighed in on what has long been a debate among theologians, insisting that the Church’s sacraments are a gift, and as such, they cannot be denied to disabled people.
Pope Francis on June 19 advanced the sainthood causes of a handful of figures who, at first glance, might seem relevant only to small pockets within the Catholic Church.
Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, now at the ripe age of 93, is scheduled to return to Rome this morning after a quick trip to Regensburg to visit his ailing 96-year-old brother – a trip which, given his increasing frailty and desire to keep a low profile, has been described by many observers as his last ‘cameo’.
Retired Pope Benedict XVI, who is 93 years old, traveled to Germany to visit his ailing older brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, who is 96.
The U.S. demonstrations over police aggression toward minorities has an antecedent in Northern Ireland, according to a police commander in Salinas, California, who spent the first 10 years of his life in Northern Ireland in the midst of “the Troubles” there, then later wrote his master’s thesis on the applicability of its policing reforms to the United States.
