Pope Francis’ decision to move the local celebrations of World Youth Day from Palm Sunday to the feast of Christ the King addresses the pastoral needs of local churches, said Father Joao Chagas, head of the youth section of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life.
In that brief intermezzo over the summer between what turned out to be the first and second great surges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis held a series of appropriately socially distanced, “virtual” conversations with his premier English-language explicator about what he believes needs to be done for the world to be better than it was before the crisis.
A delegation representing the National Basketball Players Association, a union representing professional athletes from the NBA, met with Pope Francis and spoke with him about their work in promoting social justice.
Members of the Armenian community in Brooklyn criticize a recent ceasefire agreement between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan in a decades-old dispute over the mountainous region called Nagorno-Karabakh. They said the deal brokered by Russia lets Azeris keep control over land they seized when fighting resumed n late September. They also worry that unresolved issues might cause warfare to start up again.
Pope Francis believes that the COVID-19 pandemic revealed “the best and worst” of each person, and that now more than ever, it’s important to recognize that the crisis can only be overcome by searching for the common good.
Members of the Nigerian Igbo community at St. Fortunata parish in East New York, Brooklyn, cry out against persecutions of Catholics and other Christian denominations in their homeland.
Pope Francis and U.S. bishops have worked hard to combat clergy sex abuse, according to officials who said the church has made a serious effort to put the victims first even if it means publicly exposing ugly facts about crimes.
Even during a global pandemic, the World Day of the Poor will be an important opportunity for parishes to highlight the importance of charity and spiritual comfort for those in need, said a Vatican official.
In the end, it’s possible the McCarrick report may be remembered as the single most consequential step toward reform during the Pope Francis papacy, not only because of what it reveals about this particular case, but the precedent it sets for how all future cases ought to be handled.
Pope Francis blessed a statue of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal as it was to begin a pilgrimage throughout Italy to mark the 190th anniversary of Mary’s apparitions to St. Catherine Laboure.
