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“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...

If religion-beat journalists looked carefully enough, they could see an interesting question lurking inside the rhetoric of the current Latin Mass wars. That question: What does it mean to be “pro-Vatican II”? If reporters flip that question around it turns into this: Who is “anti-Vatican II”? For example, see this language at the top of a Catholic News Agency report this past summer with this headline: “Pope Francis: There are many ‘restorers’ in the US who do not accept Vatican II.” There are many “restorers” in the United States who do not accept the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis said. … Speaking to the editors of Jesuit journals, he criticized what he called “restorationism” in the Church, which he defined as the failure to accept Vatican II, the ecumenical council held from 196...

It would be hard to find a place in the world more destitute than Malakal, South Sudan. The surrounding region defies preconceptions of what the interior of Africa looks like. Watered by the Nile, this is a lush environment which has drawn an eclectic mix of visitors in its history. In 1898, the nearby settlement of Fashoda (now called Kodok, just upriver from Malakal) was the site of a famous standoff between Lord Kitchener’s British forces and a plucky detachment of French troops under Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, who had embarked on an epic 14-month trek from West Africa to steal a march on the old enemy who were in the process of conquering all Sudan. It is strange to think that a dispute over this wilderness once came close to starting a great European war. Tumult Malakal’s more re...

Screengrab via Bacon et. al.  ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. In what may be a major archaeological breakthrough, an independent researcher has suggested that the earliest writing in human history has been hiding in plain sight in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe, a discovery that would push the timeline of written language back by tens of thousands of years, reports a new study. Hundreds of European caves are decorated with mesmerizing paintings of animals and other figures that were made by our species between roughly 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic Age when humans were still hunter-gatherers. These cave paintings often include non-figurative markings, such as dots and lines, that ...

Cardinal George Pell of Australia died Tuesday evening at the age of 81. The cardinal underwent a hip replacement surgery on Tuesday, several sources told The Pillar, and reportedly died of complications from the surgery at approximately 8:50 p.m. in Rome. The hip operation was initially deemed a success, with sources close to the cardinal saying that he had been able to make conversation with nurses in his recovery room, before he suddenly went into cardiac arrest shortly before he died. Pell was appointed in 2014 the first prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, charged with implementing a program of financial reform in the Vatican. He was before that the Archbishop of Sydney, and had been before that Archbishop of Melbourne. Pell was in 2018 convicted in Australia of commi...

In the previous pieces for this series, we referenced C. S. Lewis’s Trilemma, essentially: in claiming He was God, Jesus was either a liar, insane, or God. We’ve addressed that Jesus actually lived and walked on earth, that He claimed divinity, that He was not a liar, and that He was not insane. And that leaves us with the same conclusion of the centurion in Mark’s Gospel: “Surely, this man was the Son of God.” To bring this Trilemma series to a close, let’s make a few final observations.

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“I’m calling on behalf of the Holy Father.” The priest from New Jersey working in the Vatican prefaced his words with a plea: “Please don’t hang up on me when I say what I’m about to say.” He had learned from experience that day. Someone else thought his call was a prank. It was just a week before the opening Mass of the Year of Faith at St. Peter’s Basilica, also the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. I was being invited to receive a message for all the women in the world (I kid you not).  As the official invite from the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization put it: “The Holy Father has invited you to be present … in order to receive from him a copy of the message as the representative of women throughout the world.” The message was a rep...

For reasons too complex to go into, while completing a doctorate in the German College in Rome in the 1990s, I shared breakfast with the then Cardinal Ratzinger every Thursday morning for nearly three years. Those breakfasts were often initially awkward because, although the Cardinal was always gracious, he had no ‘small chat’ at all and was fairly hopeless at making casual conversation. Ratzinger was a painfully shy man who did not find socialising easy. At those breakfasts, therefore, I would engage him in theology – at which point he would come alive. I was writing a thesis on the great German theologian Karl Rahner, with whom Ratzinger had taught, and so it was easy to draw him into theological conversation about Rahnerian themes. For Ratzinger was, above all else, an intellectual. He ...

Happy Friday friends, And a very happy Epiphany to those of you who celebrate it today. I know that in many places the feast is transferred to the Sunday, but here in Rome they still keep the day on the day, so to speak. It’s been an interesting few days for JD and me, here in Rome to cover the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI. We’ll get to all of that in a second. And hopefully we have a few more friends to see and catch up with before we head home over the weekend. But I have to admit to a certain sadness to being away from home today. As JD has mentioned on the podcast more than once, I take the celebration of Christmas very seriously, and I make a real effort to keep making merry right through until today’s feast, when my wife and I usually host a Twelfth Night party at our house. We had t...