A day after the bishops of Venezuela declared the new presidency of Nicolas Maduro “illegitimate,” Pope Francis sent a Vatican representative to his inauguration. The successor of the late Hugo Chavez thanked Msgr. George Koovakod for his “bravery” for coming.
After weeks of confusion and consternation, Rome’s mayor told the Vatican newspaper that Rome Caritas would benefit not only from the coins tourists throw in the Trevi Fountain, but from coins tossed in any of the city’s historic water features.
Members of Pope Francis’ study commission on women deacons spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday, saying the pope has their report and expressing confidence that when the moment comes, he’ll make the right call.
Migrants from across Honduras set out from San Pedro Sula for the border with Guatemala early Jan. 15, hoping to reach the U.S. border amid controversies over fortifying the southern frontier with a wall.
Three years after the gut-wrenching image of the lifeless body of little Alan Kurdi, a toddler who drowned and washed up on the shores of Turkey, sent shock waves around the world, his aunt has said there’s been little follow-up to the initial outrage and urged global leaders to put some bite behind their bark when it comes to helping refugees.
Coptic Christians in Egypt celebrated Christmas Jan. 7 – breaking their 43-day vegetarian fast, a religious practice in which Christians refrain from all dairy products and meat during the Advent season.
Christian leaders in Israel have condemned an art exhibit in Haifa which they say is insulting to Christianity.
Almost a year to the day since Pope Francis’s troubled January 2018 visit to Chile, a group of Chilean bishops is returning the favor, visiting Rome on Monday to try to “strengthen communion” with the pontiff after a series of clashes that included Francis accusing Chilean prelates of covering up clerical sexual abuse and of destroying evidence.
No sooner had President Donald Trump finished his Jan. 8 nine-minute speech, his first such event televised in prime time from the Oval Office, about what he called a “crisis” at the border, than Catholic groups and others began tearing apart his arguments.
It’s commonly asserted in the West that the Chinese word for ‘crisis’ is a combination of the characters for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.’ This comes to mind after the sudden death of the Bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung of Hong Kong on Jan. 3 of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 73, leaving the diocese vacant for the first time since it transferred to China in 1997.
