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Beijing, China, Jan 17, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Chinese officials have evicted members of the clergy, including a bishop, from their homes and are closing Catholic parishes in the Diocese of Fujian. While the officials cited “fire safety standards” as the reason for the evictions, all the clergy and churches affected have refused to join the Communist-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. The CPCA, the state-run Catholic Church, entered into an agreement with the Vatican in 2018, regularizing the status of its bishops. While the terms of the agreement have not been released, it has widely been reported that it gives the Communist party effective veto power over future episcopal appointments.  The deal was intended to regularize the status of the so-called underground Chur...

Hong Kong, China, Jan 17, 2020 / 07:06 am (CNA).- The Holy See has delayed announcing its pick for the next bishop of Hong Kong, CNA has learned, amid concerns that local clergy and lay Catholics will see Rev. Peter Choy Wai-man as too sympathetic to the Chinese Communist government. The Diocese of Hong Kong has been without permanent leadership since January 2019, when Bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung died unexpectedly. Since Yeung died, the diocese has been led temporarily by Cardinal John Tong Hon, Yeung’s predecessor, who retired from the post in 2017. Senior Church officials in Rome, Hong Kong, and mainland China have independently confirmed to CNA that a decision to appoint Fr. Choy as Hong Kong’s next bishop has received final approval in Rome. Choy is presently one of four vicars g...

Paris, France, Jan 15, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- The French Catholic bishops’ conference permanent council has approved a recommendation to remove references to the sex of parents on baptismal registry forms. “The increasingly complex situation of families in France makes it extremely difficult to draft Catholic acts, especially regarding baptism,” Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat of Langres, president of the French bishops’ conference Council for Canonical Questions, wrote in a letter dated Dec. 13, 2018. He said, because of complex family situations, chanceries in several dioceses in France had “faced problems of vocabulary.” According to canon law, he said, “ministers cannot refuse sacraments to persons who opportunely ask for them, while children cannot be held responsible for the situation ...

Vatican City, Jan 15, 2020 / 10:53 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has named Dr. Francesca Di Giovanni as undersecretary for multilateral affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State, marking the first time that a woman has been appointed to a managerial position in the secretariat. Di Giovanni, 66, was appointed undersecretary for the Section in Relations in States. She has worked as an official in the department for more than 25 years, with specialties including humanitarian law, communications, migrants and refugees, and the status of women, according to Vatican Media. She will now work with Monsignor Miroslaw Wachowski, who also serves as undersecretary for the Section in Relations in States, but focuses on bilateral affairs. Di Giovanni’s field of multilateral affairs focuses on the interactio...

Vatican City, Jan 14, 2020 / 05:58 am (CNA).- Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the private secretary of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, said Tuesday the former pontiff was not informed he would be presented as co-author of a new book on priestly celibacy and that Benedict has asked for his name and photo to be removed from the cover. According to the German-language news agency KNA, Ganswein said Jan. 14 that he had called Cardinal Robert Sarah that morning, at Benedict’s request, to ask the book’s publisher to remove the signature of the pope emeritus from the introduction and conclusion, because he had not co-authored them. Ganswein said that the chapter in the main part of the book is, however, “100 percent Benedict,” according to KNA. “It was a misunderstanding – without questioning Cardin...

Vatican City, Jan 13, 2020 / 02:56 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Robert Sarah said Monday that claims Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI did not co-author with him a new book on priestly celibacy are “defamations of exceptional gravity.” The publisher of the book told CNA that critics suggesting that the pope emeritus did not co-author the book, or authorize its publication, are wrong. “Are these people really implying that Cardinal Sarah is involved in a conspiracy to distort the truth?” Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, editor-in-chief of Ignatius Press, asked Jan. 13. “If Cardinal Sarah is telling [Ignatius Press] that the chapters from Pope Benedict are from Pope Benedict, we take his word for it,” Fessio said, adding that the publisher stands by its attribution of the book to both Sarah and Benedict. The pries...

The book, entitled From the Depths of Our Hearts, addresses the ‘dark time’ the Catholic priesthood is enduring because of Church scandals and ‘the constant questioning of their consecrated celibacy.’ VATICAN CITY — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has taken the surprising and historic step of co-authoring his first book since his resignation almost seven years ago — and by asking in it that Pope Francis not allow the ordination of married men to the priesthood in the Latin Church. The 175-page book, entitled Des Profondeurs de nos cœurs (From the Depths of Our Hearts) and written with Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, discusses the spiritual challenges confronting today’s priests, and draws attention to the dange...

ABOVE: Photo by Vatican Media. BELOW: All photos by Joanne Bergamin. The annual ceremony on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord carries on a tradition of Pope Saint John Paul II. Pope Francis welcomed 29 families to have their newborns baptized in the Sistine Chapel Sunday morning, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Pope Saint John Paul II began the annual tradition of baptizing the children of Vatican employees and embassies to the Holy See. Before the papal Mass, there was none of the usual scrambling for seats but rather an unusual amount of joyful calm for an early Sunday morning ceremony at the Vatican. Mothers, fathers, siblings, godparents and extended families were all smiling, amid the very occasional cry of one of the 32 babes in arms, which included one set of twins and one ...

From the streets of Dallas to Chicago (below) and San Francisco (above), thousands of pro-lifers will take a stand for the unborn this month. (2019 photos, courtesy of Catholic Pro-Life Community, March for Life Chicago and West Coast Walk for Life) Events around the country reflect heart of the cause. WASHINGTON — On Jan. 24, tens of thousands of people will be part of this year’s annual March for Life in Washington. Tens of thousands more — adults, teens, school groups and families who cannot travel to the nation’s capital — will be marching in 30-plus companion events held on different days in states across the country, praying for the end of abortion. Midwest The earliest companion marches and walks were scheduled to begin Jan. 10-11. One of the largest is the March for Life Chicago 20...

Berlin, Germany, Jan 10, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- A radical feminist group has taken credit for an ongoing series of attacks on pro-life advocates in Germany, including the vandalism of two churches and the burning of a pro-life journalist’s car.  On December 27, an evangelical church in the town of Tübingen was spray-painted and a minibus was set on fire in front of the church. Authorities estimated that the vandals caused 40,000 euro in damages.  Shortly after the vandalism, a confession letter was posted online on the website indymedia, where the church was accused of “anti-feminist attitudes.” The letter was singed by a group calling themselves the “Feminist Autonomous Cell.”   Four days later, on the same website, the group said that they had “t...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis warned Thursday that increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran are setting the stage for a broader conflict in the Mideast while jeopardizing efforts to rebuild Iraq. Francis listed the “particularly troubling” deterioration of U.S.-Iran relations following the U.S. strike that killed Iran’s top general in his annual foreign policy address that also touched on climate change and nuclear proliferation. Speaking to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, Francis denounced the “pall of silence” among world leaders about the long-running war in Syria, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the intensified fighting in Libya in his global roundup of areas of concern for the Catholic Church. Vatican officials and Christian leaders in Iraq have voiced alarm about...

The Harir air base as seen on Sept. 21, 2016. (Edward Pentin photo) The region, which was targeted by one of the pair of missile attacks launched yesterday as retaliation against the U.S., is home to several thousand Christians who have been trying to rebuild their lives. ROME — Christians in northern Iraq are increasingly concerned about tensions in the region after Iranian forces launched five missiles overnight on an air base in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil that houses U.S.-led coalition troops. The Nineveh Plain just north of Erbil is home to several thousand Christians who have been trying to rebuild their lives following the trauma of the Islamic State group (ISIS) occupying many once predominantly Christian towns north of the capital from 2014 to 2017. Iraq’s military said the...