With 2019 already off to a running start, Vatican-watchers can expect a packed year of surprises, updates and new twists and turns. The to-do list includes the papal reform agenda, the clerical abuse crisis, international travel and possible new appointments to key dioceses and curial offices.
In a landmark 8-page letter to U.S. bishops who are on retreat in response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the American Church, Pope Francis called for a “new ecclesial season” led by bishops who are more than administrators interested in “pointing fingers,” and instead, leadership marked by “collegial spiritual fatherhood,” rooted in humility and unity.
In response to a “dubia,” or doubt, posed about the moral implications of a woman getting a hysterectomy, the Vatican’s doctrinal office said Thursday the removal of the uterus is licit in “extreme cases” where health risks are imminent and where sterilization is not an issue.
Women who worked in Ireland’s “Magdalene laundries” but were denied compensation under the state’s Magdalene Restorative Justice program have won their long-running battle to have their applications reassessed.
Due to its influence and presence, representing 40 percent of the global Catholic population, there’s a tendency for a disproportionate share of Catholic stories to come from Latin America. 2018 was no exception.
When news broke on New Year’s Eve that the Vatican’s two official spokespersons, American Greg Burke and Spaniard Paloma Garcia Ovejero, had resigned, words such as “sudden” and “unexpected” figured in many headlines.
The Vatican asked U.S. bishops to delay voting on proposals for responding to the sexual abuse crisis back in November due to the lack of time given the Vatican to study the proposals and potential conflicts with church law, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press.
On Monday the Vatican announced that Greg Burke and Paloma Garcia Ovejero, Director and Vice Director, respectively, of the Holy See Press Office, have resigned.
Sister Wendy Beckett, who gained fame in the 1990s for television shows and books explaining art, died Dec. 26 in Norfolk, England, at the age of 88.
While memories of the gusting winds, catastrophic rain downpour and devastation that followed are vivid in the lives of those who were affected in New York and New Orleans, a similar chain of events were also felt by a resident across the world who lived through Super Typhoon Haiyan that struck the Philippines five years ago in November 2013.
