Formally installing catechists and lectors into their roles as lay leaders in the church is especially important as a recognition for women and men in places like the Amazon region, where many are de facto religious leaders in remote communities that suffer from a severe shortage of priests, said a Brazilian recently installed as a catechist by Pope Francis.
When it comes to the private notes of a pontiff, the world usually has to wait until they’ve died to have access to them, but Pope Francis this week made some of his personal notes public.
Pope Francis’s highly anticipated document on the Amazon bypasses two hot-button issues looming over its publication – the possibility of married priests and women deacons – while calling for “outrage” over the treatment of the region’s land and its peoples.
Talking about debates, differences and discernment, Pope Francis told a group of U.S. bishops that people focused on the possibility of ordaining some married men and women deacons for service in the Amazon will be disappointed in his apostolic exhortation.
One month after famously stealing indigenous statues and throwing them into Rome’s Tiber river, the man who has quickly become one of the global Church’s most polarizing figures is now making his way across the U.S. hosted by traditionalist Catholics.
With the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon in the final stretch, the Vatican Museums unveiled a new exhibit dedicated to the people, customs and Catholic faith in the Amazon.
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 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.
While the Amazon region has been the focus of this month’s Vatican meeting of bishops, one of the Americans taking part says he hopes the gathering’s reverberations will be felt in the United States.
Catholic bishops are not fully utilizing Church law to maximize the role of women in decision making capacities, Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai said on Oct. 23.
