Pope Francis Archives - Page 13 of 464

Pope Francis

‘The assumption must be faced that Pope Francis is consciously breaking with the Church’s tradition’

October 04, 2023

We can’t say we weren’t warned. On World Youth day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, Pope Francis, excited by the crowds of young people, adopted something of the energetic creativity of the teenagers he was surrounded by and exhorted them to make a mess: “I want to tell you something. What is it that I

Pope’s new head of doctrine praises department’s ‘democratic system’ for handling queries

October 03, 2023

ROME – Pope Francis’s new doctrine chief has said he believes a revised structure for his department is working well, and now includes a “democratic system” for handling whatever queries or complaints might arrive that prohibits him from making unilateral decisions. New Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close papal friend and ghostwriter who recently became

Pope responds to cardinals’ dubia, says ‘maybe’ to blessing some same-sex unions, ‘no’ on women priests

October 02, 2023

ROME – Responding to a group of five cardinals who posed critical questions about his upcoming Synod of Bishops on synodality, Pope Francis largely upheld the Church’s ban on women priests, while suggesting the doctrine can still be studied, but signaled openness to giving blessings to same-sex couples provided that doing so is not confused

There is nothing new about the pope’s concern for the environment

October 02, 2023

With a follow-up to ‘Laudato Si’, the pope’s environmental encyclical, due to be published 4 October, Suzanne Topham wonders what else the Catholic Church can possibly say on the subject I met a Catholic a little while ago who told me about his ecological conversion. A few years previously, he had read Laudato Si and been plagued

Lawyer in ‘trial of the century’ claims defendants treated Vatican bank ‘like a cash machine’

September 28, 2023

ROME – A panel of Vatican judges overseeing the trial of ten defendants for extortion and other financial crimes, dubbed the Vatican’s “trial of the century”, heard Wednesday from a lawyer representing the Vatican bank who complained that the accused had treated the bank “like a cash machine, which always had to respond positively to their

Pope Francis is well-intentioned but misguided when he talks about migrants

September 25, 2023

Last week president Emmanuel Macron hosted two prestigious figures to France and one proved more problematical than the other. King Charles’s State visit was a success, the perfect mix of pomp and ceremony and casual walkabouts. The British monarchy avoided controversy when he addressed the French senate, merely referring to the “existential challenge” of climate

Pope condemns hitting civilian targets after Caritas warehouse destroyed by Russians in Lviv

September 20, 2023

ROME – Pope Francis has condemned the routine use of “conventional weapons” against civilian targets in a message to Ghanian Cardinal Peter Turkson, sent the day after a warehouse in Ukraine containing several tons of humanitarian aid was destroyed in a Russian drone attack. In his Sept. 19 message, the pope pointed to what he

Alleged Rupnik victims say Church’s pledge of ‘zero tolerance’ for sex abuse is mere PR campaign

September 20, 2023

ROME – An open letter signed by five alleged victims of Father Marko Rupnik, a former Jesuit and renowned Slovenian artist, asserts that recent events show pledges of “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse by church officials are merely a “PR campaign … followed only by frequently covert actions, which support and cover up for the