Polish president discusses ‘promotion of the family’ with Pope Francis

Pope Francis expressed regret that some places are promoting abortion as an 'essential service' in the humanitarian response to the pandemic

The Vatican announced Thursday night that Cardinal Angelo Becciu had resigned from the rights extended to members of the College of Cardinals, but it did not specify which rights the cardinal had lost

Nearly 700 Protestant ministers have written to political leaders urging them not to suspend Christian worship again

President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will issue a “Born Alive Executive Order” will “provide necessary legal protections for some of the most vulnerable in society,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund. “These steps had to be taken,” she said, “because some Democrats in the Senate promised to

Legal experts have pushed back after a Catholic commentator said it is reasonable for the Senate to question potential Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s membership in the People of Praise, a charismatic covenant community based in South Bend, Indiana. Barrett, a federal judge and professor at Notre Dame Law School, is widely reported to

Twenty-sixth Sunday of the Year Ezekiel 18: 25-28; Philippians 2: 1-11; Matthew 21: 28-32 “Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so that nobody thinks of his own interest first, but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead. In your mind you must be like Christ Jesus: his state was divine, but

The televised final of Myanmar’s Got Talent last year featured a mesmerising performance by Erasmus – the stage name of the American magician Angelo Stagnaro. Erasmus began his act by randomly selecting a volunteer: he did this by throwing 10 paper aeroplanes into the audience, one of which contained a message to come to the

Reading English at Warwick University, I understood that poetry inspires and moves but I did not immediately recognise it as prayerful. Yet a brief scan of the breviary reveals how the Daily Office is bookmarked with poetic gems from George Herbert, John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) would be a welcome female

The Enchantments of Mammon By Eugene McCarraher Elknap Harvard, £31.95 Eugene McCarraher detests capitalism. Yet, to his immense credit, and to the great benefit of his book, he keeps polemic and manifesto-making largely at bay until the epilogue of a 700-page exploration subtitled “How capitalism became the religion of modernity”. Then, while twice approvingly quoting

Conan Doyle’s Wide World: Sherlock Holmes and Beyond By Andrew Lycett Bloomsbury, 336pp, £18 Part of the magic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal Sherlock Holmes stories derives from the author’s sense of atmosphere and place. Now Andrew Lycett, the author of a definitive biography on Conan Doyle, has gathered together the crime writer’s travelogues.

It is comforting, exhilarating even in these bleakish times, to learn of some won­drously ingenious detail of life, so extraordinary as almost to defy belief. For ornithologist Tim Birkhead a fer­t­ilised hen’s egg is an “everyday miracle of nature”, a complete and self contained support system for the dev­eloping embryo within. The yolk must contain,