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‘Ungodly and Inhumane’ — Father Isaac Achi, Pastor in Diocese of Minna, Burned to Death By Terrorists in Nigeria…
Father Achi served as the priest of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church. Tragically, his body was found among the charred parish building. A Catholic priest burned to death on Sunday after bandits set fire to his parish rectory in northern Nigeria. The body of Father Isaac Achi was found among the charred parish building of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church on Jan. 15, according to the Catholic Diocese of Minna, Nigeria. He died after armed bandits attacked the priest’s residence in the village of Kafin Koro at 3 a.m. Another priest at the rectory, Father Collins Omeh, escaped the building, but sustained gunshot wounds and is being treated in a hospital. Alhaji Sani Bello Abubakar, the governor of the Nigerian state of Niger where the attack took place, described th...
Don’t misunderstand the rise of the Nones. What parishes need now is not new programs, but more lay people whose everyday lives are an attractive witness to the Catholic faith…
By now it is well known that the Catholic Church in America—and organized religion more generally—must contend with the sudden growth of people who identify with “no religion.” Nearly 30% of Americans now check the box for “no religion,”[1] including 40 percent of millennials.[2] The Catholic Church has been hit especially hard: for each person who joins the Catholic Church, nearly seven leave.[3] Many who become religious “Nones” claim they no longer affiliate with organized religion because of its closemindedness, corruption, or an apparent incompatibility between science and religion.[4] To some, these developments present a clear challenge with an obvious solution: do a better job catechizing young people by presenting them with arguments that prevent them from believing misconceptions...
For Italians, the disappearance of ‘Vatican girl’ Emanuela Orlandi remains the ‘mother of all mysteries’…
Listen to this story: ROME – To judge by sensationalist newspaper headlines and breathless social media posts, one might assume that the open conflict in Catholicism unleashed by the death of Pope Benedict XVI and fanned by a series of tell-all revelations from his longtime aide, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, would be the talk of the town in Rome — which, after all, is where the drama is unfolding. In reality, it’s just not so. Walk into any Roman barbershop, restaurant or private home these days that’s more than a three-block radius away from St. Peter’s Square, and, to the extent anyone’s talking about a Vatican story, it isn’t Pope v. Pope, or Francis’s recent crackdown on his own Vicariate of Rome, or the Rupnik affair about a Jesuit artist accused of sexual abuse, or anything else. Inste...
Eucharist Revival through billboards? How the Church is spreading news of Our Lord with the people of Cleveland…..
Courtesy photo. Catholic Diocese of Cleveland The Diocese of Cleveland is taking the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival effort to the streets with 33 billboards that expound 33 faithful quotes from leading Catholics, from St. Jerome to Pope St. John Paul II, about the power of the sacrament. Courtesy photos. Catholic Diocese of Cleveland The billboards are present along the highways and byways of the diocese, which borders Lake Erie in eight counties in northeast Ohio. The effort is part of a larger marketing plan that will post new quotes on new billboards during Lent and followed with large gatherings of the faithful next summer, said Father Damian J. Ference, who is the vicar for evangelization and secretary of parish life and special ministries in the diocese. “We are trying to...
Professionalism has accelerated the decline of the Catholic Church in America. The mission of the Church can’t be made into a profession…..
For several years I was part of a group of Catholic leaders who helped shape and lead a week-long ministry formation program every summer. We had funding from a large Catholic foundation and were officially a project of the US Bishops (USCCB). At the end of the week, we gave each participant a certificate stating they completed the formation program and then we encouraged them to go even further to become certified in their area of ministry. This meant they had to meet certain further standards, interviews, etc. before they got another certification. This is not uncommon. There are certifications for catechists, RCIA (now OCIA), youth ministry, DREs, campus ministry, and more. You can go to conferences, get advanced degrees, get certifications, get online professional formation, etc. I hav...
‘A Colossal Loss’ — Fire Destroys Seminary Buildings in Nigeria…
A fire in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna engulfed several buildings in the St. Peter Minor Seminary complex on Tuesday, destroying more than $445,000 in property. The seminary had not been in use for two years — political insecurity and attacks on Christians had forced the Archdiocese of Kaduna to transfer its seminarians to a safer location. But seminary rector Fr. Edward Sati said the archdiocese had hoped to bring the seminarians back if the area becomes more secure. Now, that may be impossible, unless the archdiocese can rebuild. The Pillar spoke with Fr. Sati about the recent fire, what may have caused it, and the local reaction in the archdiocese. That conversation is below. It has been edited for length and clarity. Fr. Edward Sati, courtesy photo. Can you walk us through...
5 Spots on the Planet Where You Can Be in Multiple Places at Once…
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After all of the hoopla and anticipation, after the big reveal of Jesus, what follows? Crickets…..
In Advent, the Gospels focused on John the Baptist telling us to expect Jesus to come to us. Now, on the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A, we are still listening to John the Baptist — only now, he is telling us that Jesus is expecting us to come to him. And after all of the hoopla and anticipation, after the big reveal of Jesus, what follows? Crickets. The order of events our Masses are covering goes like this: At the Baptism of Jesus, John said “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” This Sunday’s Gospel passage starts on the very next day after Jesus was baptized. What we read in Mass omits the first few words of the verse. In full it says: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said ‘Behold the Lamb of God.” So it seems like on Day One as John bapt...
The Long Shadow of Cardinal Pell…
By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Jan 11, 2023 Personal encounters About twenty years ago, in a series of email messages, the late Father Paul Mankowski and I exchanged arguments against the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. This was a private conversation, at first, and since we were old friends, accustomed to speaking freely, the language of the exchange was fairly colorful. Eventually, convinced that our ideas were worthy of a wider audience, we cleaned up that language, removing some of the saltier expressions, and published the result in Catholic World Report. Before it was published, however, Father Mankowski told me that he had shared the exchange with then-Archbishop George Pell. I was taken aback. Had he sent him the original, uncensored version? Yes, s...
Amarillo chancery rebuts Frank Pavone and says he was notified of dismissal; Pavone now admits ‘they may have indeed sent something’…
“I told the bishop not to. And the Vatican knew it,” he told CNA. “This was not a normal relationship. It was abuse. If they say they sent something, they are admitting to violating a very serious, long-standing set of instructions to stop abusing and harassing me,” he said. “That abuse obviously continues, and therefore our canonical and civil remedies will continue as well,” he added. Pavone’s conflicts with Bishop Zurek have centered on Priest for Life’s fiscal operations, Pavone’s provocative social media posts and past roles with Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, and Pavone’s livestreamed endorsement of Trump just before the 2016 election when the pro-life activist placed the remains of an aborted baby on an office table many believed to be an altar. More in US Pavone, for his pa...
Must-read: Archbishop Chaput on Benedict XVI, Cardinal Pell, Vatican II, Pope Francis, Jesuits, and the Synod…
Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., is the emeritus archbishop of Philadelphia, and a long-time leader among American bishops. The archbishop, 78, became in 1988 the second priest of Native American ancestry to become a diocesan bishop. After serving nine years as the Bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, Chaput became in 1997 the Archbishop of Denver, and was appointed in July 2011 to lead the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Chaput and the Philadelphia archdiocese hosted in 2015 the World Meeting of Families. In the same year, Chaput was a delegate to the Synod of Bishops on the Family, and was elected to a term on the Permanent Council of the Synod of Bishops in the Vatican. The archbishop, the author of four books, talked with The Pillar this week about the deaths of Pope Benedict XVI and C...
Swiss Bishops Issue Meek Call to Respect ‘Rules’ After Video Emerges of Woman Mimicking Mass Concelebration…
The bishops rejected any claim that they were defending “patriarchal clericalism.” Rather, they said, “priests, in the service and execution of the sacraments, make visible that Jesus Christ himself acts in and through the sacraments.” Priests “keep open, as it were, space for God’s action in the liturgy.” Schmid, the pastoral worker whose retirement Mass sparked the controversy, was critical of the bishops’ letter. She advocated a liturgical celebration that, in her view, “reaches out to people in their daily lives, in their language and in their understanding of themselves,” Cath.ch reported. The bishops referred to Pope Francis’ June 2022 apostolic letter Desiderio desideravi. It insists on the quality of liturgies, the careful attention to every aspect of liturgical celebration, and th...
