Pope Francis will open a conference later this month looking at how to reverse Italy’s low birthrate. Francis, who the Vatican said is to take part in the Rome event in person, has lamented the “Italian demographic winter” and warned that “the future is in danger”.
On a chilly day in January, Father Peter Tran Thanh Truc got up at 3am to greet a group of 35 health workers from Ho Chi Minh City and showed them to tents where they were to sleep. He celebrated morning Mass at 5am and then prepared a big breakfast for them before they offered medical check-ups and medicine to 400 patients from Tan Phuc Subparish.
What has happened, is happening, since our pandemic began, is that very many people have become very ill, very many people have died, very many people live neither ill nor dying but very frightened. The educated among us recognise that we have so ill-treated our earth that this situation was inevitable. Children especially have realised this, and knowing that the earth they will inherit is in dire straits they have made lots of noise and actions towards returning it, and us, to viability.
The pandemic is having a devastating impact on the Church’s income, and at a time of urgent need, influential voices are concerned about the looming crisis. It has been a year unlike any other. But this Easter Sunday, Catholics will be feeling a degree of relief: not only that coronavirus vaccines are being rolled out and the end of lockdown is in sight, but also that they can go to Mass.
The birth of the Draghi government has been welcomed as a fairly exceptional event in the history of the Italian Republic. The most recurring comparison – although we will discover it is not entirely appropriate – has been with the Ciampi, Dini and Monti governments. These were all “technical” governments, born following moments of parliamentary crisis and in contexts of deep economic or political difficulties for the country.
Police in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have charged a Catholic nun with violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law after she was accused of trying to allure a Hindu teacher to Christianity. The case against the nun is based on the complaint of Ruby Singh, a Hindu woman who joined the school as a teacher in 2016. The school management terminated her services last year during the Covid-19 lockdown after complaints about her teaching from parents and students.
Today, on March 24, the United Nations commemorates the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. Little do many people know about this day, but for the Salvadorean people, it is the day they lost their dearly beloved Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero, globally known as San Romero of the Americas.
Medieval ancestors were not entirely helpless in the face of illness and disease. As was so often the case, monasteries were at the forefront, providing both physical and spiritual healig. Before and above all things, care must be taken of the sick, that they be served in very truth as Christ is served,” says Chapter 43 of the Rule of St Benedict, the set of regulations that governed life in many monasteries in medieval England.
In the past year, in every part of the globe, millions of lives have been lost and personal worlds turned upside down. In the first of a three-part series, individuals tell their stories of gain, loss and adapting during lockdown.
If there is one word that sums up in a nutshell what the world is experiencing, it is “crisis.” In his Christmas greetings speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis employed it no fewer than 46 times. The crisis is no longer a commonplace of conversations and of the intellectual establishment; it has become a reality shared by all.”
Intense preparations for Pope Francis' historic visit to Iraq have been underway for several months, despite continued uncertainty about the safety and feasibility of the trip. But, unless there is a last-minute change of events, the 84-year-old Francis will leave this Friday (March 5) to become the first pope in history to visit this war-ravaged Middle Eastern country.
On July 18 last year, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen attended the installation ceremony of Archbishop Thomas Chung An-zu of Taipei in the nation’s capital. President Tsai delivered a speech where she hailed the Church’s century-long presence as having been vital for the development of Taiwan. "Over the past few decades, the Church has helped Taiwan society in so many ways and at so many levels that it is impossible to describe them in a few words or a few days," Tsai said.
A colleague once challenged Pierre Teilhard de Chardin with this question. You believe that good will ultimately triumph over evil; well, what if we blow up the world with an atomic bomb, what happens to goodness then? Teilhard answered this way...
For one whole year, 2020, a single anxious thought dominated the minds of all people in all the nations of the world: how to escape the clutches of Covid-19. It was a rare occasion when all humankind focused on just one issue. Today, Feb. 11, is the World Day of the Sick. It reminds us that while illness and injury may be part of our lives, we owe it to ourselves and to those we love to appreciate the gift of health and wellness.
President Joe Biden has spoken of the central role faith plays for him in showing a way through dark times. And he has pledged to confront and defeat white supremacy and domestic terrorism. Speaking at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, he said: “For so many in our nation, this is a dark, dark time. So where do we turn? Faith.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols called on Catholics to pray for the 100,000 people in Britain who have died with coronavirus, their families and communities. Cardinal Nichols described the milestone as “a day of great sadness all over the land”.
Reginald Foster OCD, the celebrated Latinist who died in December, committed one act of civil disobedience in the course of his duties for the Vatican.Tasked with making the official Latin version of a text written in Italian or Polish by Pope John Paul II, Reggie came across a phrase referring to Latin as a "dead" language.
President-elect Joe Biden should choose a non-Catholic to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Eleven Americans have represented the United States to the Holy See since 1984, the year the two states formally established full diplomatic relations. And every one of those envoys has been a Catholic.
Father Pier Luigi Maccalli had been working as a Catholic missionary in southern Niger for 11 years when -- on September 17, 2018 -- he was abducted in the middle of the night from his home in the small village of Bamoango.His kidnappers took the then-57-year-old Italian priest and member of the Society of African Missions (SMA) into the Sahel Desert.
Bishop Henri Coudray is a French-born Jesuit who has lived in the north-central African country of Chad since the 1960s. He spoke to La Croix's Xavier Le Normand about his life and ministry and his delight in being able to build a cathedral in a territory that is 95% populated by Muslims.
