The chief communications officer for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized a new book on Pope Francis’ papacy for perpetuating “an unfortunate and inaccurate myth” that Pope Francis is facing resistance from the leadership and staff of the bishops’ conference.
The saints were flesh-and-blood people whose lives included real struggles and joys, and whose holiness reminds all the baptized that they, too, are called to be saints, Pope Francis said.
Pope Francis warned against building walls and ignoring the traditions of those often on the margins of society in his final message to the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.
The ordination of married men to the priesthood and women to the diaconate, and the creation of a special “Amazon rite” of the Mass — All three ideas generated enthusiasm but also blowback during the synod.
Pope Francis has said that Asia would be a priority in his pontificate, and he will be visiting the region again next month, when he visits Japan and Thailand in November. The pontiff has spoken about a desire in his youth to serve as a missionary in Asia, but he never got the opportunity with the Jesuits.
The global ecological crisis is just one of the effects of a distorted and diseased view people have of the world, themselves and each other, Pope Francis said in a new book.
ROME. With his liturgical memorial (October 11) falling on the fourth full day of the Special Synod for Amazonia, which sometimes seems bent on recycling every tried-and-failed nostrum from 1970s, it was inevitable that certain portside Catholic commentators would continue their effort to spin Pope St. John XXIII into a smiley-face, chubby Italian grandpa whose approach to the future of the Church was somewhat Maoist: “Let a thousand flowers bloom!”
Father James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large at the Jesuit-run, Manhattan-based America Magazine, met with Pope Francis on Sept. 30 in a private audience at the Vatican.
A devastating typhoon that hit Japan over the weekend is unlikely to change the program of Pope Francis, who is scheduled to visit the country next month.
Once again, Eugenio Scalfari, the 95-year-old co-founder and past editor of La Repubblica, a daily Italian newspaper, has caused an uproar with a supposed quote from Pope Francis.
