After the trip was announced, the Iraqi Parliamentary Assembly voted unanimously to declare Christmas an annual national holiday, and Salih ratified a law benefiting Yazidi survivors of the 2014-2017 ISIS genocide. Both of those developments happened months before Pope Francis boarded the Papal plane. However, months removed from the trip, experts say nothing has changed.
Pope Francis has named U.S. Cardinals Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and James M. Harvey, archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, to be members of the Vatican’s supreme court.
Writing to his peers, Catholics who have reached a venerable age like he has, Pope Francis told older Catholics that God is close to them and still has plans for their lives.
Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens has formed Laudato Si Corporation, a green-energy initiative to generate renewable energy with arrays of solar photovoltaic panels mounted on the rooftops of residential buildings throughout the diocese.
“The Mediterranean has become Europe’s largest cemetery,” the pope told visitors gathered in St. Peter’s Square June 13 to pray the Angelus with him.
A delegation of Indigenous people from Canada will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican before the end of the year, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said.
Christians together can change the world. That was the message Pope Francis gave Wednesday, June 9, to Catholic leaders and evangelical and pentecostal pastors gathered for this year’s John 17 retreat, encouraging them to continue on a path of unity.
Agreeing with German Cardinal Reinhard Marx that Catholic leaders cannot adopt an “ostrich policy” in the face of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, Pope Francis still told the cardinal that he would not accept his resignation as head of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.
Pope Francis led hundreds of pilgrims and visitors in St. Peter’s Square in a moment of silent prayer for the Indigenous children who died in Canadian residential schools and for their grieving families.
It was the second year the Mass was held with a reduced congregation and without the traditional outdoor Corpus Christi procession afterward as part of the ongoing efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
