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Jimmy Lai quizzed over ‘seditious retweet’ in HK court Skip to content The jailed Catholic publisher Jimmy Lai returned to court in Hong Kong Monday to give testimony in his trial under the territory’s controversial National Security Law. Lai, who has been in prison since 2020, is accused of colluding with foreign powers and publishing seditious materials. If convicted, he faces life in prison. Jimmy Lai. Image via Doughty Street Chambers. In court appearances Dec. 13 and 16, his legal team sought to contextualize and defend alleged attempts to conspire with foreign forces against the governments of Hong Kong and mainland China, specifically by lobbying foreign government officials to sanction the Hong Kong government and local officials. Share On Friday, Lai was asked to explain his accou...

Addressing the “Conference on Popular Piety in the Mediterranean” in Ajaccio, Pope Francis highlights the importance of these expressions of faith as a means of fostering evangelization in our increasingly secularized societies and communities. By Lisa Zengarini Far from being an obsolete folkloristic expression, popular piety can be a powerful means for evangelization today, fostering community and belonging, Pope Francis said in his first speech during his Apostolic Journey to Corsica. 15/12/2024 Pope Francis has boarded the papal plane and left Italy, travelling to the French island of Corsica. Speaking at the Palais des Congrès et d’Exposition of Ajaccio at the conclusion of the “Congress on Popular Piety in the Mediterranean”, the Pope reiterated that the “acti...

On 15 December, Pope Francis’ 47th Apostolic Journey abroad will take him to Corsica, known as the Île de beauté, where he will take part in the Conference on Popular Religiosity in the Mediterranean before meeting with the clergy and faithful of the French island. By Salvatore Cernuzio On the one hand, popular piety, the faith of ordinary people, expressed in pilgrimages, acts of devotion in sanctuaries, traditional songs and prayers; on the other, the Mediterranean with its challenges, the echoes of war, the tragedy of migration that has turned the Mare Nostrum into an ‘open-air cemetery’: Pope Francis’ apostolic journey on 15 December to Corsica, Napoleon’s birthplace, known as Île de beauté, the “island of beauty” with its landscapes framed by forests, beaches and mountains, enda...

Lay ‘episcopal delegate’ added to Eucharistic Prayer in Belgian province Skip to content Pastors in a Belgian province have been asked to include an episcopal delegate in the Eucharistic Prayer at Masses. Rebecca Alsberge, episcopal delegate for the vicariate of Brabant Walloon, Belgium. Screenshot from @vicariatdubrabantwallon4305 YouTube channel. A Nov. 6 archdiocesan memo to clergy in the vicariate of Brabant Walloon, a French-speaking area south of the capital, Brussels, proposed naming Rebecca Alsberge alongside the pope and the local bishop in the Eucharistic Prayer. Leave a comment In Belgium, an episcopal delegate is a territorial coordinator responsible for a region of a diocese. The position is called in some countries a regional vicar — though the term “vicar” is reserved for re...

At the weekly General Audience, Pope Francis concludes his cycle of catechesis on the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, and recalls that the Holy Spirit is the “ever-flowing source of Christian hope.” By Christopher Wells Pope Francis dedicated his reflection at the General Audience to the theme of “The Holy Spirit and the Bride: the Holy Spirit guides the People of God towards Jesus our hope”, the title of the cycle of catechesis that concluded on Wednesday. The Holy Father looked to the Book of Revelation, with the eschatological invocation, “Come,” addressed to the risen Christ by “the Spirit and the Bride.” noting that our hope for the final coming of Jesus is always present in the Church. At the same time, the Pope said, the Church also expects the c...

This year is the 170th anniversary of the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in his encyclical Ineffabilis Deus (1854), which declared that the Virgin Mary, “from the first moment of her conception … was, by the singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of Mankind, kept free from all stain of original sin.”  And of course, it was just four years later in 1858 when Mary appeared to the young French peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, and declared to her, “I am the Immaculate Conception” in a manner that indicated she was offering this as a definitive title for her deepest identity.  What the Immaculate Conception Means  Many Protestants, and indeed not a few Catholics, confuse ...

COMMENTARY: Syrian Salafi Jihadist rebels are gaining territory at a breakneck pace, leaving many unanswered questions in their wake about the possibly far-reaching consequences of regime change. We’ve seen the images before: long lines of ragged, heavily armed, bearded men entering a city whose defenses have seemingly collapsed like a house of cards. It happened in Afghanistan twice, most recently in 2021. It happened in some cities in Iraq in 2014. It is now happening in Syria. But Syria is not Afghanistan. It is a Mediterranean country, a nation with a Sunni Muslim Arab majority, but important Kurdish and Christian minorities. It is the land of the Street Called Straight; of Ananias, who restored the sight of St. Paul; of St. John of Damascus, the last of the Church Fathers. Five popes ...

(OSV News) — Despite a few high-profile delays in recent years, the canonization of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen — the popular, scholarly archbishop and 20th-century pioneer of Catholic broadcasting — is “inevitable,” said the head of the foundation supporting his cause. “The desire to see Sheen beatified is increasing, and there is a growing devotion to him,” Msgr. Jason Gray, executive director of the Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation, told OSV News. In an article for the foundation’s 2024 year-end newsletter, Msgr. Gray — who also serves as the judicial vicar and episcopal vicar for consecrated life for the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, as well as pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Peoria Heights — pointed to several indicators of Archbishop Sheen’s expanding reputation for ho...

COMMENTARY: The Supreme Court has an opportunity to further protect vulnerable children and safeguard our Constitution from infiltration by today’s progressive ideologies. The Supreme Court will hear oral argument Wednesday in U.S. v. Skrmetti, one of the most consequential cases under review by the Court this term. Here is a quick primer on what the Skrmetti case is all about: In spring 2023, shortly after Tennessee lawmakers passed SB1, a law that prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” Before SB1 went into effect, three families and a doctor challenged the law. Their comp...

Angelus Angelus Dómini nuntiávit Mariæ.Et concépit de Spíritu Sancto.Ave Maria… Ecce ancílla Dómini.Fiat mihi secúndum verbum tuum.Ave Maria… Et Verbum caro factum est.Et habitávit in nobis.Ave Maria… Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei génetrix.Ut digni efficiámur promissiónibus Christi. Orémus.Grátiam tuam, quǽsumus, Dómine,méntibus nostris infunde;ut qui, Ángelo nuntiánte, Christi Fílii tui incarnatiónem cognóvimus, per passiónem eius et crucem, ad resurrectiónis glóriam perducámur. Per eúndem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen. Gloria Patri… (ter)Requiem aeternam… Benedictio Apostolica seu Papalis Dominus vobiscum.Et cum spiritu tuo.Sit nomen Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus,Pa ter, et Fi lius, et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen. The Angelus Prayer The Angel of the Lord d...

Lawmakers in England and Wales are set to vote Friday on a bill to legalize assisted suicide — a potentially “colossal” change that Catholic leaders and other opponents of the legislation warn would normalize suicide and subject vulnerable people to enormous social pressure to end their lives, despite promised safeguards to curb such coercion. The proposed legislation — called the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill — would allow terminally ill adults judged to be mentally competent who have six months or less to live to end their lives with the approval of two doctors and a High Court judge. Introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, the bill seeks to amend the nation’s 1961 Suicide Act that, until now, has outlawed assisted suicide and carried a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. If ...

Pope cites ‘Amoris laetitia’ on doctrine in synodal implementation note Skip to content Pope Francis cited principles in his 2016 exhortation Amoris laetitia Monday, in a note calling for the synod on synodality’s final document to be implemented in dioceses worldwide. Pope Francis attends an ecumenical prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 30, 2023. © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk. In a roughly 900-word text released Nov. 25, the pope stressed that the global synodal process didn’t end with the synod on synodality’s Oct. 27 closing Mass. He announced that when bishops prepare reports ahead of their ad limina visits to Rome — which take place roughly every five years — they will need to explain how they have implemented the final document in their dioceses. Share Reflecting on how local C...