Pope Francis said he wanted to be close to all the world’s priests at this time, recalling clergy who have died of COVID-19

A few weeks back, the Italian bishops floated the idea that they might just decide to close all of Italy’s churches during the coronavirus lockdown. “Not because the state imposes it on us,” Italy’s bishops wrote on March 12, “but out of a sense of belonging to the human family.” The Italian bishops did not

Comment & Features Why does God allow disasters? The astonishing reason is love – Peter Kreeft How does good come out of evil? And other questions about providence – William Newton ‘My faith brought it upon me’: The pandemic and the love of neighbour – The Catholic Herald My post-crisis resolutions: Worry less – and

The Vatican has thanked Chinese organisations for donating medical supplies to help it combat the coronavirus

“Mario is genuinely one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” How often do tenants speak like that about their landlord? But then Mario Salerno is an unusual kind of landlord. He owns 80 apartments in Brooklyn, from which this month he will receive precisely zero dollars’ rent. Last week his 200 tenants found a

If you are reading this in the print edition, you hold in your hands a minor historical document: the last weekly edition of the Catholic Herald. As I explained in this space last week, we have decided that the best way to serve our readers is to produce a bigger, more considered and wider-ranging monthly,

A minority of people who contract the coronavirus will become so ill they will be admitted to intensive care for intubation on a ventilator. They may be placed in induced comas, and their chances are not especially good. Those who are Catholics have the right to ask for a priest to administer the Sacrament of

It is generally acknowledged that the NHS could have been better prepared for the coronavirus pandemic. It entered the crisis with just 8,000 ventilators and so few testing kits that it remains unable to determine even how many of its staff have the virus. Medical professionals still complain of a shortage of masks and other

Tucked at the back of Senator Eddie Lucio Jr’s office in the grand State Capitol building in Texas is a small side room that serves as a chapel. Statues and icons flank a centrepiece painting of Christ catching St Peter’s hands as he sinks into the waves. Catholicism and politics have long had a strained

In responding to coronavirus, even the most developed societies have been stretched to the limits. How much worse it is for persecuted and despised minorities, living on the margins of society. Friends in Pakistan describe how the pandemic is piling hardship upon hardship. Their lives are difficult enough already: many are forced to live in

In January I began to feel a premonition that something dangerous was spreading. Now, a week before Easter, my worst fears have been confirmed. We are now facing a highly serious outbreak, for which there appears to be no cure. Ever since “Veganuary”, we have seen more and more cases of veganism in the UK

Disasters like the current global pandemic invite us to ask two questions about the relation between our faith and our disaster. First, what, as a matter of historical fact, happens to faith when disaster hits? And second, what is the logical or theological relation between disasters and the tenets of our faith, especially the dogma