There was a 'culture of acceptance of abusive behaviour' at Ampleforth and Downside, the report says

Whether with a Holy Hour or sackcloth and ashes, prelates can make reparation for the sins of their brother bishops

Mgr John Armitage is helping to lead an ambitious renewal project at England's best-loved shrine

In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II gave an uncompromising defence of Humanae Vitae

We need a revived Catholic curriculum to reclaim our cultural inheritance, from Bede to 'Lepanto'

Last week, when Pope Francis made his much-discussed change to the Catechism entry on the death penalty, I happened to be reading a journalist’s memoir about Death Row. The author is an Associated Press reporter, Michael Graczyk, who retires this month aged 68, after witnessing more than 400 state executions. This has made me think

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Pope Francis is changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to declare that the death penalty is “inadmissible” – in other words, always wrong. It may never be used. The Catechism was already opposed to capital punishment: in 1997 St John Paul II amended its most recent version to declare that the cases

✣ Pope orders change to Catechism on death penalty What happened? Pope Francis changed the wording of the Catechism on the death penalty. There was widespread disagreement, however, about the meaning of the change, in which the death penalty was said to be “inadmissible”. The Catechism previously said that Church teaching “does not exclude recourse

✣ Highlights from the week online A saint’s writings finally in print At New Liturgical Movement, Peter Kwasniewski drew attention to a major new publishing project. Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) is, Kwasniewski wrote, one of the Church’s “most fascinating and complex mystics”. Beatified by John Paul II, Blessed Anne had an extraordinary range of

New Orleans Centre to promote African-American sainthood candidates Xavier University of Louisiana has announced that its Institute for Black Catholic Studies will become a centre for promoting the Causes of African-American Catholics, pursuing scholarship into their lives and work. Among the candidates it plans to focus on are Fr Augustus Tolton, the first recognised African-American

The Supreme Court takes another step away from Church teaching There is utter clarity about Catholic teaching on the withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration from a patient to bring about death: it constitutes an act of euthanasia. Pope St John Paul II was uncompromising on this point. In an address in 2004 he