The U.S. Supreme Court will take up a case about religious accommodation this spring when it examines an appeal by a former postal worker who was forced to work Sundays delivering Amazon packages.
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Brazil’s Amazon Region Hit Hard by COVID Second Wave
A devastating second wave of COVID-19 in Amazonas State has caused the healthcare system to collapse and raised the mortality rate in the region to 190 deaths per 100,000 people, the highest one in Brazil. The state had at least 266,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 8,000 deaths.
‘For the Love of God, Send Us Oxygen,’ Plead Bishops in Brazil’s Amazon
With the news that dozens of people were suffocating to death due to a lack of oxygen in hospitals in the Amazon city of Manaus, Catholic bishops made a plea for the supply of an essential element for survival.
Vatican Museums Unveils Amazon Exhibit, New Space for Native Artifacts
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.
Synod Offers Cautious Support For Married Priests, Study of Women Deacons
Catholic communities in the Amazon might be able to ordain married men to the priesthood under limited circumstances, based on the outcome of a meeting of bishops in Rome that issued its final report Saturday – although the document stopped short of a full-throated endorsement for the ordination of either married men or women deacons.
Group Advocates for Women’s Ordination on the Sidelines of the Synod
As the Vatican’s meeting on the Amazon draws to a close this week, one group is using the occasion to seek new roles for women in leadership, hosting a prayer vigil on Oct. 23 in support of women’s ordination to the priesthood and the diaconate.
Amazon Group Denounces Theft and Destruction of Indigenous Statue in Rome
An indigenous organization has denounced the theft and destruction of wooden statue of a naked pregnant woman from a Church in Rome on October 21.
Controversial Amazon Statue Stolen From Church, Thrown in Rome’s Tiber River
A wood carving statue of a naked pregnant woman that has been at the heart of brewing controversies since before the Vatican’s major summit on the Amazon region began was stolen from a Roman Church on October 21 and tossed in the Tiber River.
Amazon Bishops Pledge Poverty, Spurning Plastics and Taking the Bus
Some 40 bishops participating in the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon gathered October 20 in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome to renew a pact signed in 1965 by 42 prelates at the Second Vatican Council calling for a poor church.
Amazon Prelate Floats Alternative to Married Clergy: Send Some Roman Priests Home
One Venezuelan prelate taking part in the current Synod of Bishops on the Amazon says people back home have a creative alternative for coping with chronic priest shortages, beyond the much-discussed idea of married clergy to serve isolated rural communities.