Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni has criticized optimistic politicians who speak of quick fixes to Europe’s migration crisis, arguing that the roots of the crisis are so deep, it will take at least a generation to clean up the mess.
“The Chinese Communist Party will never end coercive population control, because coercive population is keeping it in place,” prominent women’s rights activist Reggie Littlejohn tells Breitbart News.
Two former members of the economic commission entrusted with overseeing the reform of the Vatican Bank are charged with handing over confidential documents in what is being called Act 2 of the Vatileaks scandal.
On Sunday yet another ship carrying migrants sank off the coast of the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, resulting in the death of eleven people, including two children and four babies, according to the Greek coast guard.
On Sunday afternoon, Pope Francis traveled to Rome’s largest cemetery to celebrate Mass and pray for the “faithful departed,” an ancient Christian custom associated principally with All Saints Day (Nov 1) and All Souls Day (Nov 2).
In his Angelus message on the Christian feast of All Saints, the Pope said to the large crowd assembled in the sunny Saint Peter’s Square: “we experience in a particularly vivid way the reality of the communion of saints, our extended family, made up of all members of the Church, both those who are still pilgrims on earth, and those—immensely more—who have already departed for heaven.”
A growing trend among Christian families is dressing children as saints for Halloween, rather than as ghouls or witches, to take back the celebration of the “Hallowed Eve” of the Feast of all Saints.
In his homily Friday morning, Pope Francis said that when God forgives us, He knows full well that we are guilty, not like a judge who acquits a criminal for lack of evidence; yet He pardons us anyway.
Evolutionary biologist and celebrated God-slayer Richard Dawkins is expressing his bewilderment at how America can simultaneously be the world leader in the natural sciences while also a strikingly religious nation.
China’s announcement Thursday that it is “abandoning” its draconian one-child policy was met with skepticism among critics, who contend that it substantially changes nothing, since the communist government still asserts absolute control over families and will continue to enforce its will with coercion.
Pope Francis says direct attacks on Jews are not the only form of anti-Semitism, but that attacks on the State of Israel and its right to exist are also anti-Semitism.
A cargo plane with ten passengers crash landed in Somalia in a territory controlled by al-Shabaab Islamists on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu, a government source said Thursday.
On September 29, Catholics celebrate the feast of the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. Saint Michael, whose name in Hebrew means “Who is like God?”, is depicted in the Bible as the commander of the heavenly host and the victor over Satan, who appears as a dragon. He is often shown in sacred art as standing over the devil, sword in hand, with one foot on the devil’s head.
After 36 years, communist China has finally decided to end its infamous one-child policy and will now allow couples to have up to two children.
The European Union voted through a new law in Brussels on Tuesday, making some internet porn filters illegal and obliging internet services providers (ISPs) to treat all online content “without discrimination, restriction or interference.” Certain ISPs such as BT, Sky
A 67-year-old Roman Catholic nun was excommunicated and ousted from her religious order last week after revealing that she had been secretly ordained a priest earlier this year and has since been presiding over Catholic rituals.
In an address to an interreligious audience Wednesday, Pope Francis paid tribute to the Jewish people, noting that in Jewish-Christian relations, “indifference and opposition have turned into cooperation and goodwill.”
Armed jihadists broke into three departments at the University of Aden in southern Yemen on Monday, distributing leaflets signed by the Islamic State (ISIS) and threatening death to university authorities if they do not enforce a strict separation of the sexes.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has published a report blasting the Malaysian government for clamping down on free speech in order to silence critics.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating what it calls a “global crisis” of religious freedom, and the resulting challenge to U.S. Foreign Policy.
The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics is out with a response to the recently concluded Vatican synod on marriage and the family, noting its optimism that “a new era for inclusive pastoral care of LGBT people is going to start after the synod.”
In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris next month, a group of cardinals, patriarchs and bishops have called for a radical, legally binding international climate agreement that mandates, among other things, complete global decarbonization by 2050 and “an end to the fossil fuel era.”
Many of the attacks on churches have been religiously or racially motivated, the Center notes, such as a string of arson attacks at six predominantly black churches in the Saint Louis area this month, although federal law enforcement agencies have ruled these fires to be unrelated and police are as yet unwilling to say whether the attacks are racially driven. Acts of arson are also significantly more common in churches than in other structures, and in recent years only 5-10% of residential and non-residential fires were intentionally set, as compared to the 51% of church fires that were deemed acts of arson.
In a meeting with Chaldean bishops from Iraq and Syria Monday, Pope Francis used some of his strongest language to date to condemn what he called the “fanatical hatred” of Islamic terrorists that has provoked a “hemorrhage” of Christian faithful out of the Middle East.
Pope Francis said that on hearing the news of the passing of Cardinal Korec, he was moved with “deep emotion” and sorrow, calling him “a generous and zealous shepherd who in his long ministry in the Church offered a fearless witness of the Gospel” and was a “staunch defender of the faith and human rights.” The pontiff sent a telegram of condolences to the President of Slovakia’s bishops’ conference.
