Across the world, parents are engaged in battles with local and national governments over their right to decide how sex education is taught to children in schools. Some have had more success than others in standing up to the sex education establishment and also, regrettably, in recruiting the Church in their support. In the Canadian

Almost exactly a year ago, the Holy See and the Chinese government signed an agreement on the appointment of bishops designed to “normalise” relations and – at least in the mind of the Vatican – enhance protection for China’s 10 million Catholics. A year on, where are we? Well, there has been no tangible sign

The world premiere of The Two Popes, a film directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Anthony McCarten, took place at the Telluride Film Festival last week. It stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who would become Pope Francis. The trailer has dropped,

YES SAYS STEPHEN DAISLEY Of all the writers won to Rome, GK Chesterton is among the most prized. The late convert was the happiest of Catholic warriors, an apologist whose epistles brimmed with cheerful pessimism and savoured the ironies of human fallibility. They also brimmed with anti-Semitism, one of the reasons recently given by the Bishop of Northampton for

A year ago, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was a retired diplomat who was little known beyond the limited world of Vaticanologists. He had reached the senior position of apostolic nuncio to the United States in October 2011, but his retirement in 2016 would normally have signalled an end to his influence. On August 25, 2018,

Eighteen months ago I was having lunch with a well-known columnist and contrarian, when conversation turned to predictions. In particular, where the next front in the culture wars might open. Neither of us had foreseen the rise of militant veganism, nor the formation of a vocal lobby advocating transgender rights. So, he wondered, what engine

On July 14, parishioners of Saint-Budoc à Porspoder in France learned that a vandal or vandals had vomited in the parish’s holy water stoups and thrown a cross in the trash. On July 26, paint was splashed on the faces and crotches of figures in the Valinhos Way of the Cross in Fatima, Portugal. On

A news item last week reminded me of a story about the writer Flannery O’Connor. In one of her letters collected in The Habit of Being she described how she was present at a swanky literary gathering in New York where the author Mary McCarthy was a fellow guest. O’Connor was intimidated by the literati

It’s a sunny morning in London on the feast of Corpus Christi and, not coincidentally, I’m standing outside the presbytery of Corpus Christi Church waiting for someone to answer the door. Somewhat to my surprise, it is opened by the man I’ve come to interview: Cardinal Francis Arinze, who is in town to celebrate Mass. The former

Recently I strolled slowly up a hill with a local priest in a remote area of China. He remained close to me as we ascended steep slopes to a Marian pilgrimage church, not because he was unsteady on our climb, but because he wanted to speak in a quiet whisper about what is going on

On the morning of Wednesday, May 15, 2013, David Villalobos left his wife, Melissa, asleep in bed as he dressed quietly then left their Chicago home to catch a flight to Atlanta on an unavoidable business trip. He had asked her the previous evening if she would like to be woken to say goodbye but