John L Allen Jr/ Crux, Author at Catholic Herald

John L Allen Jr/ Crux

April 21, 2024

ROME – Amid the usual cascade of news out of the Vatican in recent days was a curious item, which, among other things, touches upon the ever-vexed matter of papal security. It involves the arrest of a U.S. fugitive captured in St. Peter’s Square, armed with three knives, just before Pope Francis’s regular Wednesday General

The Pope and the Press: papal interviews have always been a risky business

April 07, 2024

ROME – Your starter for ten: Which of the following modern pontiffs gave a high-profile interview to a journalist on extremely sensitive subjects, the result of which was controversy inside and outside the Catholic Church, compelling Vatican officials and spokespersons to issue “clarifications” which did relatively little to calm the waters? The correct answer, as

Pope’s ‘foreign policy’ Easter message: What got included, what got left out

March 31, 2024

ROME – A pope’s Easter Sunday Urbi et Orbi blessing, meaning “to the city and the world,” is generally understood to be one of his premier foreign policy statements of the year, a sort of 365-degree review of the global situation. Which issues and hotspots a pontiff chooses to highlight, therefore – and, equally, which he chooses

Father Pietro Pappagallo: The priest who died a martyr in Italy 80 years ago to this day

March 24, 2024

ROME – Exactly 80 years ago today, on March 24, 1944, the Nazi occupiers of Rome shot 335 Italians to death, mostly civilians, in a series of caves on the southern outskirts of town called the Fosse Ardeatine. The killings came in retaliation for an attack the day before by the Italian resistance that left

‘For Love of My People, I Will Not Stay Silent’: Italian priest whose ‘martyrdom’ inspired locals to speak out against organised crime

March 19, 2024

ROME – Thirty years ago today, a young Italian priest was gunned down by a mafia hitman as he was preparing to say Mass, thereby giving his life for his people. In itself, perhaps, there’s nothing especially unique about that, since scores of Christian martyrs of all eras, both clergy and lay, have done exactly

Worldwide papal travel is here to stay, whether Demos II likes it or not

March 03, 2024

ROME – On the evening of April 19, 2005, just hours after his election, the man who had just become Benedict XVI confided to Alberto Gasbarri, a longtime veteran of Vatican Radio and the chief organizer of papal trips, that he likely wouldn’t travel much because he didn’t feel he had the same aptitude for

How Pope’s blessings for same-sex couples undermine peace efforts in Ukraine

February 25, 2024

ROME – As the world marked the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine yesterday, the failure to date of all diplomatic efforts, including those of the Vatican, to bring the war to an end were painfully clear. The most obvious reason for those failures, of course, is the fact that neither Russia nor Ukraine

Reaction to Fiducia in US has revealed ‘enduring animus’ to ‘LGBT persons’, says key Pope ally

February 18, 2024

ANAHEIM – One of Pope Francis’s most vocal allies in the Church hierarchy in the United States has criticised the reaction among some Catholics in the country to Fiducia Supplicans. Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego has said that while it’s fine for a priest concerned about protecting the institution of marriage to refuse to offer

Italy and the Catholic Church still riven by pernicious politics of memory

February 13, 2024

ROME – Italy’s February 10 “Day of Remembrance” is worth giving more consideration to than might seem immediately obvious to the non-Italian outsider, given the poignant way it captures the politics of memory. On the one hand, this Memorial Day to a cluster of events from an era of the Second World War and its

Pope of surprises: but will latest Vatican developments placate papal critics?

February 04, 2024

ROME – Fans of the epic British period drama “Downton Abbey” will recall that in the series finale, at one point Gladys Denker, maid to the Dowager Countess of Grantham, schemes to sabotage her chief rival, Spratt the butler, by revealing that he moonlights as an advice columnist for a lady’s journal, expecting that he’ll

Cardinal Ambongo: emerging papal candidate due to Fiducia Supplicans

January 31, 2024

ROME – There is a story that during British rule of India, colonial officials became concerned about poisonous cobras in the city of Delhi and decided to offer a bounty for every dead snake. Enterprising locals, naturally, began to breed cobras in order to collect the reward. When the British discovered the ruse and withdrew

Is the Pope after an ‘Assisi on the Tiber’ to promote his spiritual vision

January 23, 2024

Mikhail Gorbachev once declared that while he remained an atheist, he had to admit that Soviet Communism had never produced anyone quite like Saint Francis, the Poor Man of Assisi, and his universal humanistic appeal. The former Soviet premier, who visited Assisi in 2008, is one in a long list of global figures who’ve been

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