In a meeting with Jesuits in Mozambique earlier this month, Pope Francis said that clericalism is a direct result of rigidity and linked to a fixation on sexual morality. “One dimension of clericalism is the exclusive moral fixation on the sixth commandment,” Pope Francis said according to the Jesuit-run journal La Civilta Cattolica transcript published

A surge in under-age Christian and Hindu girls in Pakistan being kidnapped, raped and forced to marry and convert to Islam has been condemned by one of the country’s leading bishops. In an interview with Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore confirmed reports of abductions involving girls as

Cardinal William Levada, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has died at the age of 83. He was the first American to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), one of the most senior positions in the Curia. Levada was appointed to the position by Pope

While his responsibilities are greater and his prayer list longer, Pope Francis said he’s basically the same person he was before he was elected in 2013, so he still goes to confession every two weeks. “The mere fact that I now dress all in white has not made me any less sinful or holier than

Leading American Catholic philosophers have written to the leadership of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome to express their concern that recent changes at the university have not properly respected the academic integrity of the institution. “Observance in full of previously instituted procedures is part of what defines any academic institution as free

The bishops of Germany have voted to adopt a set of statutes for their long-planned “Synodal Assembly.” The decision was taken in a vote on Wednesday, September 25, the final day of the plenary session of the German bishops’ conference. The bishops voted to adopt the statutes by a margin of 51-12 with 1 abstention.

Germany’s bishops have voted 51-12 in favour of adopting the statutes of their “synodal assembly”. A bishop in the Philippines has called for children to be vaccinated after the first outbreak of polio in almost 20 years. George Weigel accuses the reconfigured John Paul II Institute of “a craven surrender to the spirit of the

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As he was growing up on the plains of Kansas in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it’s unlikely that young Charles Joseph Chaput, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, imagined himself a major figure in Catholic history. Educated by Capuchin Franciscans and impressed by their commitment to simplicity of life and service,

We quite naturally tend to think of the word “Christ” as Jesus’s second name. We think of the name “Jesus Christ” in the same way that we think of names like Susan Parker or Jack Smith. But that’s an unhealthy confusion. Jesus didn’t have a second name. The word “Christ” is a title which, while

The travel group Thomas Cook, which went into compulsory liquidation this week, may have invented mass tourism, but it failed to embrace technology and convert to a modern online model. It stuck with its one-stop-shop philosophy of summer and winter travel bibles, backed by an expensive chain of increasingly empty high-street shops. Like the Church,

One of the many joys of my youth was perusing the Saturday religion section of the Los Angeles Times. Among other things in the babbling brook of competing sects that is the religious life of the City of Angels, in those far-off days innumerable varieties of “New Thought” schools advertised their wares. One that caught