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Pope Francis apologizes for losing patience with woman who grabbed him in viral video…
Vatican City, Jan 1, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis apologized Wednesday for losing his patience with a woman who grabbed his arm in St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Eve. “Many times we lose our patience; me too. I apologize for yesterday’s bad example,” Pope Francis said in a departure from his prepared remarks for the Angelus prayer Jan. 1. While greeting the crowd in front of the Vatican nativity scene Dec. 31, a woman yanked the pope’s arm. Visibly upset, Pope Francis slapped her hand and walked away frustrated. After his impromptu apology, the pope said that contemplating the nativity scene helps one to see with the eyes of faith a vision of “the renewed world, freed from the dominion of evil and placed under the royal lordship of Christ, the Child who lies in the manger.”...
Chinese Communist Party announces ominous new ‘administrative measures for religious groups’ for 2020…
The new measures will be implemented starting from February 1, 2020. Activities, rallies, programs of religious communities must have the approval of the Religious Affairs Office. Religious organizations must “spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party” by educating “religious staff and religious citizens to support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party”. Beijing (AsiaNews) – As of February 1, 2020, new administrative measures will be put in place for Chinese religious groups. According to a communication published by Xinhua, published yesterday, they complete the “Regulations on religious affairs” revised two years ago and implemented on February 1, 2018. The text of the “Administrative measure...
Chinese Protestant pastor Wang Yi sentenced to 9 years in prison after saying ‘Communism is incompatible with Christian faith’…
HONG KONG — A secretive Chinese court sentenced one of the country’s best-known Christian voices and founder of one of its largest underground churches to nine years in prison for subversion of state power and illegal business operations, according to a government statement released on Monday. Wang Yi, the pastor who founded Early Rain Covenant Church, was detained last December with more than 100 members of his congregation as part of a crackdown on churches, mosques and temples not registered with the state. While most of Mr. Wang’s parishioners, including his wife, Jiang Rong, were eventually released, Mr. Wang never re-emerged from detention. As part of his sentence, he will also be stripped of his political rights for three years and have 50,000 renminbi, or almost $7,200, of his asse...
Pope Francis asks families to put down their phones on Holy Family Sunday…
Vatican City, Dec 29, 2019 / 05:30 am (CNA).- On feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth Sunday, Pope Francis encouraged families to get off their cell phones and talk to one another. “In your family, do you know how to communicate with each other, or are you like those kids at the table — each one has their own cell phone, chatting? In that table there is a silence as if they were at Mass, but they don’t communicate with each other,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Dec. 29. “We need to retake communication within the family: parents, children, grandparents and siblings must communicate with each other,” the pope said. “This is your assignment for today for the feast of the Holy Family.” Pope Francis said that the Holy Family is a model for families today in “following th...
Muslim Jihadists claim execution of 11 blindfolded Christians in Nigeria…
ISIS-aligned jihadists have released a video claiming to show the execution of 11 blindfolded Christian men in Nigeria, in what analysts say was a barbaric act that was clearly timed to coincide with Christmas, according to reports. “This is a message to Christians all over the world,” a masked man says in the one-minute video posted online late Thursday by the terror group’s Amaq news agency. He claimed the killings at the hands of jihadists from the Islamic State West African Province were in retaliation for the death of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his spokesman. Baghdadi committed suicide in October during a US special forces operation in Syria. No details were given about the victims, but ISIS said they were “captured in the past weeks” in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, ac...
Pope Francis on Christmas: Christ’s light is greater than the darkness of world’s conflicts…
Vatican City, Dec 25, 2019 / 05:30 am (CNA).- On Christmas, Pope Francis prayed for Christ to bring light to the instability in Iraq, Lebanon, Venezuela, Yemen, Ukraine, Burkina Faso, and other parts of the world experiencing conflict. “The Son is born, like a small light flickering in the cold and darkness of the night. That Child, born of the Virgin Mary, is the Word of God made flesh … There is darkness in human hearts, yet the light of Christ is greater still,” Pope Francis said from the center loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 25. In his “Urbi et Orbi” blessing, Pope Francis said that the light of Christ is greater than the darkness of broken family relationships or the suffering endured in economic, geopolitical, and ecological conflicts. “May Christ bring his light to the many chi...
The Bransfield report: Washington Post publishes secret Vatican document as parishioners demand answers…
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Pope’s Sunday Angelus: This Christmas, imitate St. Joseph’s trust in God…
Vatican City, Dec 22, 2019 / 04:57 am (CNA).- In a difficult situation, St. Joseph put his whole trust in God and was obedient, an example for all Catholics to imitate, Pope Francis said during the Angelus Sunday. St. Joseph “does not preach, does not speak, but tries to do the will of God; and he does it in the style of the Gospel and of the Beatitudes,” he said Dec. 22. “The example of this meek and wise man urges us to lift our gaze and push further,” he continued. “It is a matter of recovering the surprising logic of God who, far from small or large calculations, is made of openness to new horizons, towards Christ and his Word.” In his catechesis, the pope reflected on the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, when St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary are betrothed but not yet living toget...
Church reform takes personal conversion, Pope Francis tells Roman Curia…
Vatican City, Dec 21, 2019 / 05:02 am (CNA).- To carry out the continuing reform of the Church requires a willingness to change and a commitment to personal conversion, Pope Francis said Saturday, during his annual Christmas greeting to the bishops and cardinals of the Roman Curia. Francis quoted St. John Henry Newman, who said, “here on earth to live is to change, and perfection is the result of many transformations.” “For Newman, change was conversion, that is, an inner transformation,” the pope said Dec. 21. “Christian life is actually a journey, a pilgrimage.” The history of God’s people, the history of the Church, he continued, “has always been marked by departures, shifts, changes. The path, of course, is not purely geographical, but above all symbolic: it is an invitation to discove...
Benedict XVI creates foundation for Catholic journalism in Germany…
Würzburg, Germany, Dec 20, 2019 / 10:24 am (CNA).- In what came as a surprise to many members of the Catholic elite in Germany, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI has launched a foundation for Catholic journalism in his home country. “I want the Catholic voice to be heard,” the retired Roman pontiff, who has resided in a Vatican monastery since his 2013 resignation, said of his decision. Named after a weekly Catholic newspaper, the goal of the “Tagespost Foundation for Catholic Journalism” is to raise the equivalent of about $500,000 in 2020 to invest in training young journalists and to support a variety of projects, including research into issues of biomedical ethics, in Germany. Given that the country’s tax-rich dioceses and powerful bishops’ conference are already financing a wide array of med...
5 years after desecration by ISIS, cathedral in Iraq’s largest Christian town to be rebuilt in 2020…
Mosul, Iraq, Dec 19, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- The Great Al-Tahira Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Bakhdida remains charred black inside, five years after the Islamic State plundered and set it aflame; however, in 2020 the Syriac Catholic cathedral will be restored as Iraq’s largest Christian community fights to rebuild and regain what was lost. “It is a very significant church because it was built from the donations of local people, agriculture workers,” Fr. Georges Jahola, a parish priest from Bakhdida, told CNA. Bakhdida, also known as Qaraqosh, is located 20 miles southeast of Mosul. Fr Jahola said that the local Christians hope that in the future their town will be referred to as as Bakhdida, the Aramaic and more historic name of their town, rather than Qaraqosh, a Turkish name that ...
