Five years on, his resignation is still shocking

On the morning of February 11, 2013, cardinals gathered in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace were shifting in their seats, waiting for Pope Benedict XVI to conclude the relatively mundane business of announcing three canonisations. Then Benedict said he had something big to announce: Quapropter bene conscius ponderis huius actus plena libertate declaro me ministerio Episcopi

The Catholic cyber-wars have broken out and the casualties are piling up

I have a question for you. Which side are you on in the Catholic cyber-wars? I think I can guess the answer of many Catholic Herald readers. “What cyber-wars? We’ve heard nothing about them at Mass.” That’s a reassuring answer. Alas, I suspect it won’t be long before most Catholics discover that there really is

Liturgical squabbles, doctrinal rows, vicious public spats: the Church is once again gripped by a 1970s-style factionalism

My first parish priest was a little old man with pebble spectacles who looked like a gorgeously coloured beetle as he bent over the altar in his Roman chasuble. His name was Fr Albert Tomei; my family went to his tiny church – St Margaret’s, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey – on most Sundays between 1966 and

For “progressive” Catholics, the cappa magna is – appropriately, you may think – like a red rag to a bull.

I blinked in surprise when I saw the photographs. On June 18, the Archbishop of Liverpool – a diocese associated with the drab vestments and liturgy of the 1970s – processed into St Mary’s Shrine Church, Warrington, wearing a cape of violet silk whose train was so long that it stretched into the next postcode.

Time magazine reporting of 1978 now looks both quaint and prescient. Then, as now, everything hangs on the choice of the next pope

I was on my way to morning assembly when my friend Smith called out: “Oy, Thompson, did you hear that the Pope’s dead?” I knew most boys couldn’t care less about the Catholic Church – but the Pope had died weeks ago and we already had another one. So I rolled my eyes and suggested

John Paul II couldn’t strike a deal that satisfied the SSPX. Nor could Benedict. Enter the unlikeliest of bridge-builders

On the weekend that posters of a scowling Pope Francis were plastered over Rome by traditionalists protesting against his “bullying” tactics, news filtered through that Rome is on the verge of signing a deal with the Society of St Pius X. This year, the Lefebvrists could be fully reconciled to the Holy See. By the