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“I have considered it opportune to make changes to the norms hitherto in force concerning some specific matters, attributing the respective competencies,” Pope Francis wrote. “These normative changes reflect even more the shared and plural universality of the Church, which includes differences without homogenizing them, with the guarantee, as far as unity is concerned, of the ministry of the Bishop of Rome,” he said. Some of the 10 articles in the decree consist of only small changes in wording. For example, Article 8 changes canon law so that the Vatican will only need to “confirm,” rather than “approve,” the publication of catechisms by a Catholic bishops’ conference. Canon 775 §2 previously said: “If it seems useful, it is for the conference of bishops to take care that catechisms are i...

The disciples, “do not find their joy in money, power, or other material goods,” said the pope, but rather in “the gifts they receive every day from God: life, creation, brothers and sisters, and so on.”  These gifts, he explained, “are the gifts of life,” and disciples “are content to share even the goods they possess, because they live according to the logic of God.”  A disciple of Jesus Christ will “accept the paradox of the Beatitudes,” said Pope Francis, meaning that “they declare that those who are poor, who lack many goods and recognize this, are blessed, that is, happy.”  This is in contrast to the “worldly mindset” that possessions, wealth, and other things lead to happiness, he said.   “Jesus, on the contrary, declares worldly success to be a failure, sin...

By Francesca Pollio Toulon, France, Feb 11, 2022 / 13:45 pm Sister Andre Randon, a French nun, celebrated her 118th birthday on Feb. 11. This milestone makes her the second-oldest living person in the world and the oldest living person in Europe, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people believed to be 110 or older.  In anticipation of the big day, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, sent the beloved nun a greeting. Born Lucile Randon on Feb. 11, 1904, in Alés, France, she converted to Catholicism at 19-years-old from Protestantism. She served young children and the elderly at a French hospital until she became a nun at the age of 40. She joined the Daughters of Charity — founded by St. Vincent de Paul, in 1944. She took the name Sister Andre...

Roughly 10% of resident missions are currently vacant. So it is not surprising that there will be further moves in the coming months because they are planned and necessary shifts. The nunciature in Taipei and the study mission in Hong Kong will have new leaders. But that doesn’t mean that they are vacant at the moment. The chargé d’affaires left Taiwan, but Msgr. Pavol Talapka, the first secretary of the nunciature, remained. In Hong Kong, the Argentine Msgr. Alvaro Izurieta y Sea arrived in 2020 as deputy head of mission and remains there. The Vatican source maintains that currently China would have no interest either in having diplomatic relations with the Holy See or having the Vatican break off ties with Taiwan. This is because, the source explains, “despite China being very harsh in p...

He said: “The so-called ‘feel-good’ culture tries to remove the reality of death, but the coronavirus pandemic has brought it back into focus in a dramatic way. It was terrible: death was everywhere, and so many brothers and sisters have lost loved ones without being able to be near them, and this has made death even harder to accept and process.” The pope explained that Christianity helped believers to face death by presenting it in the light of Christ’s resurrection. “Dear brothers and sisters, it is only through faith in resurrection that we can face the abyss of death without being overwhelmed by fear. Not only that: we can restore a positive role to death,” he said. Death, he said, helps believers to see the troubles of daily life in perspective and shows the paramount importance of c...

“We see how economies are mobilized and what is most important today is war: ideological warfare, of power, trade warfare, and lots of arms factories,” he said. “War is always destruction,” he added. When Fazio asked the pope why the innocent suffer, Pope Francis said that he was himself scandalized in the face of children’s suffering. “‘Why do children suffer?’ I find no explanation for this. I have faith, I try to love God who is my Father, but I ask myself: ‘But why do children suffer?’ … Hatred, destruction are in the hands of another who sowed evil in the world through envy,” the pope said, adding that God allowed his own Son to be killed. More in Vatican “It is perhaps a mystery that we do not understand well, but in the relationship of God the Father with his Son, we can see well wh...

“In Morocco, how all the people gathered together to save Rayan. It was all the people there, working to save a child,” Pope Francis noted. “They put everything they had into it. Unfortunately, he did not make it.” The pope said he had read about the story in the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, where he had seen photos of all the people gathered at the site of the accident. “Thank you to these people for this testimony,” he said. The second story Francis highlighted on Sunday was that of a young man who had migrated to Italy from his home in Ghana. This story “will not appear in the newspaper,” the pope claimed. “John, a Ghanaian boy, 25 years old, a migrant, who suffered everything that many migrants suffer to get here, and in the end he settled in Monferrato, he started to work, to make...

Forster had served as a member of the English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee. He has been critical of a “drift” in ecumenical relations “from a vision of full visible unity to an essentially debased vision of reconciled diversity,” the Church Times said. The retired Anglican bishop had supported the ordination of women to the Anglican priesthood and the Chester diocese was the first to have a woman bishop. At the same time, he was critical of the Church of England’s approach to women bishops and how this affected relations with other Christian bodies. He thought it was “astonishing” that the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission had not published anything on the ordination of women. The Church of England broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th century, adopting a different...