VATICAN CITY (AP) — The following is the Vatican’s official English-language translation of Pope Francis “Urbi et Orbi” Easter message, which he delivered Sunday in Italian from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica: “Jesus Christ is risen! Love has
In a moving prayer in the Roman Colosseum Friday night, Pope Francis recalled the passion of Jesus Christ, comparing it to the suffering of persecuted Christians in the world today, after sending a telegram of condolence to the victims of the jihadist massacre of Christian students in Kenya.
The Vatican is offering a course on exorcism—or casting out demons—this April to teach priests and laypeople how to recognize and fight demonic possession.
According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the majority of Americans have a favorable impression of Pope Francis.
In a lengthy interview granted to the Italian Catholic online journal La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Cardinal Raymond Burke rejects attempts to paint him as opposed to Pope Francis, insisting rather that he is a faithful servant of the Church who has only sought to uphold the truth.
As further attacks from the radical Islamist group Boko Haram have disrupted Nigeria’s presidential elections, officials now say that the results will not be released until Tuesday. Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the archbishop of Abuja and Nigeria’s only cardinal, has said that the situation in Nigeria is so serious that no matter who wins the election, a major “turn of page” is needed.
In his Palm Sunday homily, Pope Francis held up persecuted Christians as modern heroes because of their faithfulness to God even in the midst of hardships. They are the ones who follow Jesus on his path of humiliation, Francis said.
As Nigerian voters turned out at the ballot box in droves on Saturday, the main things on their minds were ending corruption and putting a stop to crime and Islamic terrorism, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.
An official Vatican communiqué Friday conveyed the Pope’s sorrow and solidarity with the families driven from their homes by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq. He likened their suffering to that of Jesus Christ during His passion, and sent them financial assistance, as well as Italian Easter cakes, as a sign of his closeness to them.
President Obama will welcome the Pope to the White House in September.
Pope Francis returned to the topic of Christian joy Thursday, calling the joy of the Gospel the ID card of a true Christian and “the touchstone of a person’s faith.”
On March 8, Pope Francis visited the parish of Santa Maria Madre del Redentore, in the poor Roman neighborhood known as Tor Bella Monaca. Now he has sent a thousand pounds of food as well as medicine to the poorest families of the area.
The pizza makers of Neapolitan Pizzeria Don Ernesto decided the Pope deserved a specially personalized pizza, whether he had ordered it or not. The ingenious baker jumped over the makeshift barrier lining the route of the papal entourage and ran up to the Popemobile, handing the pizza to Pope Francis, while his comrades got the whole scene on video.
NAPLES, Italy, March 23 (UPI) — A Naples, Italy, pizzeria owner jumped a barrier during Pope Francis’ visit and ran up to the Popemobile to hand off a pizza to the pontiff. The pope told a Vatican Radio interview earlier
Amidst the enthusiasm for the upcoming Jubilee year of 2016 proclaimed by Pope Francis, Cardinal Camillo Ruini has added a sobering note of caution. “Terrorism is the greatest threat looming over the Jubilee proclaimed by Pope Francis. You cannot ignore it after what has happened in Tunisia,” he said in an interview this weekend with the Italian daily La Repubblica.
When the Archbishop of Naples picked up the vial containing the 1700-year-old dried blood of the city’s patron Saint Januarius to present it to Pope Francis Saturday, someone in the Naples cathedral shouted: “Miracle.” According to witnesses, the blood of
In his ongoing campaign to reach out to the lost and marginalized, Pope Francis spent all day Saturday exploring the Naples underbelly, seeking out the poorer areas of town, a prison, and sections dominated by the Neapolitan mafia, or “Camorra.”
In a historic statement, Pope Francis has closed the door to the death penalty, calling it “inadmissible.” In so doing, he has gone beyond any pope before him in condemning capital punishment.
Pope Francis returned to the topic of the West’s ageing population Wednesday, insisting that when the birthrate of a society barely makes it to one percent, “we can say that this society is sad and gray because it is left without children.”
Though a staunch defender of a human right to migration, Francis addressed the immense damage done to nations when their best and brightest leave home for greener pastures, a reality that has struck Bosnia and Herzegovina with a special vengeance.
Recent years have seen an increasing reluctance on the part of the Vatican to speak of the traditional “Just War Doctrine,” as Church officials have urged the exhaustion of diplomatic solutions before even considering the use of force. This reluctance seems now to be giving way to a grittier realism in the face of a relentless enemy with whom constructive, rational dialogue is impossible.
On Sunday, Pope Francis decried the massacre of Christians in Lahore, Pakistan, and denounced a worldwide effort to conceal the reality of Christian persecution.
This has been a big week for Pope Francis, as he celebrated his second anniversary as Pope, granted a lengthy interview in which he said time is ticking away on his pontificate, and called for an extraordinary Jubilee year of mercy for 2016. In the midst of this flurry of activity, Francis also found time to address a group of priests about how to be good confessors, before going to confession himself.
In an exclusive interview Wednesday, the second anniversary of his election to the papacy, Pope Francis spoke on a wide range of topics, many of which revolved around Mexico. He said that “the devil doesn’t forgive Mexico because there [the Virgin Mary] revealed her Son,” referring to the appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
In an interview Wednesday with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Emeritus Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun accused the Vatican of being naïve in its dialogue with Beijing, saying that the Church is preparing to give away too much. “Italians in the Roman Curia don’t know the Chinese dictatorship,” he said, “because they have never experienced a Communist regime.”
An article in Monday’s Daily Beast erroneously suggests that Pope Francis has allowed a priest to divulge what he heard in a deathbed confession. The deathbed in question belonged to none other than Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who allegedly confessed his sins to a young priest named Antonio Mennini before he was killed by the Red Brigade.
This week, Pope Francis will celebrate the second anniversary of his election to the papacy, marked by a notable cooling in the Left’s embrace of a man they had hoped would bring revolutionary change to the Catholic Church.
Too many so-called religious people are filled with worldliness, said Pope Francis, which blinds them to the situation of the people around them, especially those who suffer. “If your heart is worldly you cannot understand the needs and hardships of others,” he said.
A week away from the second anniversary of Pope Francis’ election to the papacy, the Pew Research Center has released its latest report on the Pope’s popularity, and far from diminishing, the Pontiff’s approval rating in America continues to soar.
The Pope had strong words Tuesday for the self-righteous, calling them “fake saints.” Their heart does not belong to the Lord, he said. “It belongs to Satan, the father of all lies, and this is fake holiness.”
In his weekly “general audience” Wednesday, Pope Francis once again employed forceful language in addressing the issue of the elderly in society, saying that the quality of a civilization is shown by the way it treats its older members. Many modern societies make no room for the elderly, he said, and carry in themselves “the virus of death.”
Native Californian Monsignor Robert McElroy of San Francisco received appointment from the Vatican Tuesday to the position of Roman Catholic bishop of San Diego. Hours later, McElroy announced that he would pressure Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Such plans
In a meeting with North African bishops in the Vatican Monday, Pope Francis praised the “courage, loyalty, and perseverance” of Catholics in Libya in the face of the “explosion of violence” in the region.
In a rare interview, the head of the Vatican police force, or “Gendarmerie,” Commander Domenico Giani, said this weekend that the Islamic State (ISIS) threats against Pope Francis are “real” and not just media propaganda. “This is what emerges from the talks I have had with Italian and foreign colleagues,” he said.
Pope Francis once again denounced the atrocious situation in the Middle East on Sunday, promising closeness to the victims of kidnappings and violence and praying for a prompt end to the “intolerable brutality” brought upon the region by Islamic State militants.
In his address to the Italian Confederation of Cooperatives Saturday, Pope Francis employed muscular language in speaking about money — while acknowledging its importance to business.
Archbishop Mario Zenari, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio in Damascus, says that Syria’s ongoing civil war and its war with ISIS have produced one of the most catastrophic humanitarian crises since the Second World War, with “upwards of 200,000 deaths, more than a million casualties, more than 7 million IDPs and 4 million refugees.”
A coalition of royals, prelates, and Catholic activists have sent a “filial appeal” to Pope Francis asking him to hold the line on Church teaching regarding the family.
According to reports, Pope Francis has accepted an invitation to travel to Ukraine. The news was released by a Ukrainian senior official involved in the exchange of prisoners in the war-torn Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and is coursing around the web in Cyrillic.
Mexican officials are up in arms over Pope Francis’ recent warning to Argentina to “avoid Mexicanization,” used in the pejorative sense of an illegal drug trade that is out of control, as well as widespread political corruption.
