Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

December 02, 2023

Pope Francis stays at Rome but sends message to world leaders gathered at COP28 in Dubai

December 02, 2023

ROME – Despite cancelling a planned trip to the COP28 United Nations climate summit in Dubai due to health concerns, Pope Francis sent a message to the event on Saturday lamenting the lack of progress in fighting climate change, repeating appeals for multilateralism, and calling the world to action. In a prepared speech read aloud

‘Your Lord is coming!’ Setting out on a new Church year with Pope Francis

December 02, 2023

In St Matthew’s Gospel we hear a beautiful promise that introduces us to the Season of Advent: “Your Lord is coming” (cf. Mt 24:42). This is the foundation of our hope. It is what supports us even in the most difficult and painful moments of our life: God is coming, God is near and is coming. Let

Rave in the Nave at Canterbury: if the Church of England doesn’t know what its cathedrals are for, can we have them back?

December 02, 2023

I HAVE COMPLEX AND PROFOUND FEELINGS of affection and protection for Canterbury Cathedral. I grew up in her shadow during my teenage years, having been sent to the Cathedral school that surrounds her. For five years I lived beside and around her. As I explored her almost daily, a relationship between us developed. Like a

Rome: a city of echoes, the locus of Christianity

December 02, 2023

Jessica Wärnberg looks at how Rome became a centre and symbol of the Christian faith, attracting pilgrims and tourists over the centuries. On the eve of Epiphany in 1608, a Congolese prince lay mortally ill in Rome. Emanuele Ne Vunda had travelled for four years to reach the pope. Within days of his arrival he

The greatest miracle of all: the incomprehensible natural phenomenon of human nativity

December 02, 2023

James Lefanu describes the almost incomprehensible natural phenomenon culminating in the birth of each one of us. Seeing the Christmas story through the eyes of small children is to be reminded of the remarkable accessibility of Christianity to even young minds. They may not grasp the implications of God Made Man but this central tenet

How can I get my child baptised?

December 02, 2023

One of the Herald’s chaplains answers your questions. My boyfriend and I have been together for years now. Ryan is three. We want him to be Catholic like us and to go to the same school I went to. We saw the priest last Sunday and told him we want the baptism next month. We

Home is where the hearth is

December 02, 2023

Recalibrating Christmas, one year at a time. Midnight Mass at the Brompton Oratory, 2013. As the celestial music and voices swirled to ever-loftier heights to brush the blue and gold of the dome, the baby began to move inside me. I leant against my husband, overcome with a sense of serenity and calm. Later, after

Spanish government continues to crack down on Catholics praying rosary in public

December 02, 2023

THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT has come under fire after police forcibly dissolved a public gathering of Catholics praying the rosary in Madrid. This occurred following a recent period of national unrest. On November 27, the Spanish authorities were ordered by the ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) administration to shut down a gathering of Catholics peacefully gathered

‘It’s the world in which we live’: are British schools still helping children to flourish?

December 02, 2023

A FEW WEEKS AGO, during a discussion on the various problems facing British schools, I was presented with a defence of the material routinely given to our children: LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter resources, feminist propaganda, and so on. “This stuff”, I was told, “is happening in the real world and we can’t hide our children