Concerns are being raised after Pope Francis gave a place of honour at the ongoing Synod on the Family to an ultra-liberal cardinal who tried to cover up a sex abuse scandal and has admitted trying to undermine the previous
A Pew Research Center poll finds Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United States has generated positive views about the Catholic Church, particularly among Democrats and liberals.
On Friday, Pope Francis asked the bishops and participants in the Vatican synod on the family to join him in offering midday prayers for the intention of reconciliation and peace in the Middle East.
Pope Francis returned to one of his favorite topics Friday morning, telling his hearers that the devil seeks above all to become master of their consciences, so they no longer can tell right from wrong.
In his morning Mass Thursday, Pope Francis reflected on the apparent worldly success of the godless while those who try to do what is right seem to fare poorly.
Pope Francis is urging the bishops gathered for the Vatican Synod on the Family not to give in to “conspiracy” theories, after 13 cardinals and bishops expressed their concern that the assembly is being manipulated in a progressive direction.
In a word intended to reassure conservatives, Pope Francis told the bishops gathered in the Vatican Synod on the family Tuesday that Church teaching on marriage is “still valid,” while also urging them to broaden their horizons, instead of focusing on internal questions such as Communion for the divorced and remarried.
An American archbishop who served as Vatican nuncio to Ukraine until several weeks ago warned that the country is in dire straits and risks becoming “a kind of Somalia in the middle of Europe.”
More than 130 notable converts to Catholicism have published an open letter begging Pope Francis and the bishops gathered at the Vatican Synod on Marriage and the Family to stand firm in teaching traditional Christian beliefs regarding the permanence of marriage, human sexuality, and the meaning of the family.
Msgr. Kryzstof Charamsa simultaneously released a “manifesto of liberation,” consisting of a list of ten “demands,” in which he insists that the Catholic Church change its teaching on the morality of gay sex as well as its interpretation of the Bible as condemning sodomy.
In his opening address to bishops gathered in Rome for the Vatican synod on marriage and the family, Pope Francis reminded them that the Synod is not a “Parliament” where participants argue their case or negotiate, but a gathering of believers attentive to the Holy Spirit.
Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, a 43-year-old Polish priest working at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been fired from his post, after coming out publically as an active homosexual Saturday.
In a scalding reproach to abortion giant Planned Parenthood, Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted has denounced its “barbaric practice of selling baby body parts,” calling for its immediate defunding.
Phoenix bishop Thomas Olmsted is urging the Catholic men of his diocese to man up and do battle with forces of evil that are “killing the remaining Christian ethos in our society and culture, and even in our own homes.”
When speaking of Europe’s migrant crisis, the Pope has often pointed to the need to address the conditions in migrants’ countries of origin, suggesting that the best long-term cure for the crisis is to stem the flow of those leaving their countries.
To many observers, it may seem strange that the Vatican would choose to keep a secret of what has been called “the most significant meeting” of the Pope’s entire trip to the United States: his 15-minute encounter with Kentucky County Clerk,
Pope Francis says that he had wanted to remind U.S. leaders “that the greatest wealth of the country and its people are its spiritual and ethical heritage,” built on the founding principle “that all men are created equal by God and endowed with inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“You know what happens to all walls,” Francis said. “All of them. All walls fall. Today, tomorrow or in 100 years, they will fall. This is not a solution. The wall isn’t a solution. At this moment, Europe is in trouble, it’s true. We have to be intelligent because a whole wave of migrants is arriving and it isn’t easy to find solutions. But with dialogue among different nations they will find them.”
He said the trip was “beautiful” and summed up the welcome he received in the three cities of his tour by saying that in Washington the welcome was “warm but more formal”; in New York the people were “exuberant” and in Philadelphia they were “very expressive.” The Pope also said he was “very struck” by the kindness of the people and by their “piety and religiosity,” evidenced during the religious ceremonies.
When asked about religious liberty aboard the papal plane during his return trip from the United States to Rome, Francis said that “conscientious objection is a right” and “if someone does not allow others to object on the basis of conscience, he denies a right.”
Among the dozens of babies and infirm people that Pope Francis has kissed during his three-city tour of the United States, perhaps none made him laugh louder than the tot decked out as the Bishop of Rome–complete with white cassock and matching papal miter.
Pope Francis warns marriage has been stretched and distorted in the United States, to the point where it is no longer even similar to the Christian sacrament of matrimony. The pontiff noted the “unprecedented changes” taking place in contemporary society, “with their social, cultural – and sadly now juridical – effects on family bonds,” referring to the Supreme Course decision in June to legalize same-sex marriage for the entire nation in Obergefell v. Hodges.
In an unscheduled introduction to his address to U.S. Bishops, Pope Francis reflected on his meeting with the victims of clerical sexual abuse, promising “zealous vigilance” to protect minors and bring to justice those responsible for this crime.
Pope Francis is reminding Americans of the centrality of religious liberty in their lives. During an address in the evocative venue of Philadelphia’s Independence Park, the pontiff called the park “symbolic of the American way.”
Abortion giant Planned Parenthood is lashing out at the Pope, after he’s repeatedly spoken up for the right to life of the unborn in his visit to the United States, accusing him of limiting women’s rights and hampering “women’s health.”
