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Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2020 / 07:05 am (CNA).- A pro-life political group has announced its plans to support President Donald Trump and pro-life senatorial candidates in their 2020 election campaigns. The announcement comes after Planned Parenthood announced its own plans to spend an unprecedented amount during the 2020 elections. The Susan B. Anthony List and Women Speak Out PAC, its partner super PAC, said Friday it has plans to spend $52 million in the 2020 election cycle.  Mallory Quigley, national spokeswoman for the group, told CNA the amount is “the largest budget for any election cycle that we’ve ever had.” News of the pro-life group’s campaign war chest followed an announcement last week that Planned Parenthood Votes will spend $45 million in a “We Decide 2020” ca...

10 years after Vatican reform, Legion in new abuse crisis By MARIA VERZA and NICOLE WINFIELD January 20, 2020 GMT https://apnews.com/d71dbfb06b1065b2e9f910c2581371e2 MEXICO CITY (AP) — The administrator of the elite Catholic school in Cancun, Mexico, used to take the girls out of class and send them to the chapel, where the priest from the Legion of Christ religious order would sexually abuse them. “As some were reading the Bible, he would rape the others in front of them, little girls aged 6 to 8 or 9,” said one of his victims, Ana Lucia Salazar, now a 36-year-old Mexican television host and mother of three. “Afterward, nothing was the same, nothing went back to the way it was,” she said through tears at her home in Mexico City. Salazar’s horrific story, which has been corroborated by oth...

Washington D.C., Jan 20, 2020 / 03:37 am (CNA).- The example of Martin Luther King, Jr., is still sorely needed in the United States, given continued injustices, racism and discrimination against minorities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a message for MLK Day. “As our nation prepares to commemorate the life and witness of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are grateful for his courageous stand in solidarity with all who suffer injustice and his witness of love and nonviolence in the struggle for social change,” Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Jan. 16. “But we are once again painfully aware that we are still far off from his dream for America, the ‘beloved community’ for which he gave his life.” King is remembe...

New York City, N.Y., Jan 18, 2020 / 09:05 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan is conducting an investigation into Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, following an allegation of sexual abuse. The investigation is being conducted under the provisions of Vos estis lux mundi, the Church law issued by Pope Francis last year on dealing with accusations against bishops. In a statement released Jan. 18, Joseph Zwilling, director of communications in the Archdiocese of New York, confirmed the investigation. “As directed by Vos estis, Cardinal Dolan earlier notified the Holy See of the allegation that was raised concerning Bishop DiMarzio from his time as a priest in the Archdiocese of Newark. On January 7, 2020, the Cardinal received instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith...

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 ...