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October 06, 2016

What’s inside this week’s magazine?

October 06, 2016

Take a look inside this week's Catholic Herald

Proposed synod on married priests ‘was voted down by Pope’s advisers’

October 06, 2016

The synod will instead focus on 'Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment'

Catholic MEP Steven Woolfe in hospital after ‘altercation’ at Ukip meeting

October 06, 2016

Woolfe had just announced he was running for the leadership of the party

We mothers of children with Down’s syndrome know something the experts never will

October 06, 2016

A child with Down's syndrome is a living human being, with the same longing to be loved as the rest of us

Ecumenism’s empty seats

October 06, 2016

The papal visit to Georgia has left us with a stark image of just how far off Catholic-Orthodox unity remains. Last Saturday, the Holy Father celebrated Mass in a stadium in the capital, Tbilisi. Instead of the usual rapturous throng, there were thousands of empty seats. The bishops of the Georgian Orthodox Church had chosen

The big story of the past seven days

October 06, 2016

✣ Papal visit draws small crowd What happened? There was a record low turnout for the closing papal Mass in Georgia. According to the Associated Press, only a few thousand people attended the Mass in the Meshki stadium, which has a capacity of 25,000. With a Catholic population of only one per cent, half the seats

The best of the Catholic blogosphere

October 06, 2016

✣ Highlights from the week online Trying to find a Francis effect Has the Pope failed? Yes, suggests Matthew Schmitz in the New York Times. He thinks Francis’s soft approach has not worked, citing research from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), which found that in 2008, 50 per cent of millennials reported

Leeds bishop to lower Confirmation age

October 06, 2016

The bishop of Leeds has announced that his diocese will be lowering the age at which youngsters receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. In a pastoral letter, Bishop Marcus Stock said young people would now be invited to make their Confirmation in their last year of primary school when they are 11, as opposed to the

Bishop: Adoration should start at primary school

October 06, 2016

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth has said that schools should have regular periods of Eucharistic Adoration, contemplative prayer and lectio divina in order to help pupils from Year 5 upwards to “build up a personal relationship with Jesus.” In a pastoral letter read out in churches last weekend, Bishop Egan said every Catholic school should

Trans people deserve our care, says Pope

October 06, 2016

Pope Francis has said that Catholics who are homosexual, confused about their sexuality or convinced they were born in the wrong body deserve the same attentive pastoral care as anyone else. Flying back to Rome after visiting Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Pope was asked, given his earlier criticism of “gender theory” and “ideological colonisation”, how

Resist the ‘global war’ on marriage, urges Pontiff

October 06, 2016

Pope Francis has said that a global war on marriage is underway and that Catholics must help couples stay strong and provide pastoral care to those experiencing difficulty. “Today there is a global war to destroy marriage,” the Pope said during a meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, with priests, Religious, seminarians and lay people. “Today you

Three cardinals back marriage appeal

October 06, 2016

Six bishops, three of them cardinals, have signed a statement reaffirming the Church’s teachings on marriage and morality. The Declaration of Fidelity to the Church’s Unchangeable Teaching on Marriage and to Her Uninterrupted Discipline has gathered more than 4,000 signatures worldwide since its launch last week. The signatories say they are resolved “to remain faithful