On Friday, an unprecedented letter written to Pope Francis by thirteen cardinals taking part in the Vatican synod on marriage and the family was published online, revealing contention regarding the revamped synodal process as well as the suitability of the draft document being used to guide the bishops’ discussions.
In the lead-up to a major summit on religion, the Chinese Communist party is preparing intensified restrictions on Christian churches, according to the Party’s official newspaper on religious issues, Zhongguo Mingzu Bao.
In the coming days, construction will commence on a new church in Egypt dedicated to the martyred Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State in Libya in February.
A young Yazidi woman, known only as Noor, told CNN that Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) militants justified raping her because the action would make her Muslim.
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.
Saddique Azam, a Catholic teacher who was recently appointed principal of a primary school in a small village of Pakistan, was severely beaten and tortured by three Islamist extremist teachers who said they refused to work under a Christian.
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.
My Dear Fellow American’s, I would like to address some of the feedback of my last article where I referred to myth and the symbols of Santa Claus and Easter Bunny.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) executed 12 Christians, including a 12-year-old boy, after they refused to abandon their faith and convert to Islam. The murders occurred on August 28 outside of Aleppo.
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.
The Pope said that Christian marriage is a cure for much of the solitude experienced by men and women in our own day. Our world, he said is characterized by loneliness and paradoxes. Today we enjoy “many sophisticated means of entertainment, but a deep and growing interior emptiness; many pleasures, but few loves; many liberties, but little freedom.” People need the family, even if they don’t realize it, Francis said.
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.”
A former Methodist church in Cambridge, which stands on a site used for Christian worship for 140 years, has been bought by the Cambridge Islamic College (CIC) for £1.3million. The sale of Sturton Street Methodist Church follows 12 months of campaigning by local
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.”
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.”
In his first address in Philadelphia Saturday morning, Pope Francis urged those listening to embrace their call to be missionaries and evangelizers, instead of waiting for someone else to preach the gospel.
The Pope encouraged the children to live with joy in their hearts. “I see you smiling. Keep living like this,” the Pope said. “Help others to experience joy. It’s not easy. In every home there are problems, difficult situations, sickness. But don’t stop dreaming of living with joy.” Departing from his written text for a moment in his meeting with Harlem schoolchildren Friday afternoon, Pope Francis turned to one of his favorite topics, telling the students and their teachers that the devil is a killjoy who tries to spoil our dreams and destroy our happiness.
Pope Francis says “religious freedom and, more generally, spiritual freedom” are “pillars of integral human development,” his most recent in a chain of appeals for religious liberty during his U.S. visit.
Pope Francis is appealing to “a moral law written into human nature itself” to assert the sacredness of every human life, including that of the unborn. A “fight against exclusion,” the Pope said in his address before the United Nations General Assembly Friday, demands “absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions.”
Ohio’s Wright State University is calling a video of a man ripping up a Koran on campus an expression of religious freedom after the video went viral this week.
