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March for Life 2022: ‘A Great Witness to the Sanctity of Human Life’…
‘A large Catholic presence’ Thursday night’s drama gave way to an upbeat show of solidarity at Friday’s march. By longstanding practice, neither organizers nor the police provided estimates of the number of marchers. More than 200 students from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio arrived by bus for the march before 5 a.m. on Friday morning, two students told CNA. The overnight bus drive took more than five hours. Participants at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21, 2022. CNA More in US This was the first March for Life for 18-year-old Lucia Hunt from Dallas, Texas, and 21-year-old Niklas Koehler from Ashburn, Virginia. They said the march met their expectations. “I definitely was looking forward to seeing a whole bunch of people defending life and there&...
Activist Group Projects Pro-Choice Messages on Washington Basilica on Eve of March for Life…
Ashley Wilson, director of communications and strategy for Catholics for Choice, tweeted an explanation of the group’s protest. “I know that my faith teaches Catholics to honor personal conscience,” she wrote. “And yet, the Catholic hierarchy seeks to polarize pro-choice Catholics and villainize people who make the moral choice to have abortions.” “I am tired of feeling shame and stigma for being a pro-choice Catholic,” Wilson added. “And I’m not here for people to judge my own personal relationship with God.” At 6:42 p.m. EST Catholics for Choice tweeted “FACT: 68% of Catholics want #RoeVWade to remain the law of the land. The #MarchForLife & @usccb want folks to think they speak for Catholics, but nothing could be further from the truth.” The images were first reported on Twitt...
Vatican Makes It Official: St. Irenaeus to Be Declared a Doctor of the Church …
In a speech to a group of Catholic and Orthodox theologians last October, Pope Francis called St. Irenaeus “a great spiritual and theological bridge between Eastern and Western Christians.” VATICAN CITY — St. Irenaeus of Lyon is one step closer to being the first martyr to be declared a Doctor of the Church. Pope Francis met with the head of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints on Thursday to discuss the conferral of the title on the saint. During the meeting, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro informed the Pope that the plenary session of the cardinals and bishops from the saints’ congregation had found the 2nd-century bishop worthy of the title, according to a Vatican statement Jan. 20. Pope Francis has already made public his intention to declare Irenaeus a Doctor of the Church wit...
Benedict XVI, Cardinal Marx Faulted in Munich Abuse Report for Mishandling Cases…
He said that in two of the cases, clerics committed abuse while Ratzinger was in office. While they were criminally sanctioned by secular courts, they continued to perform pastoral duties, he said, and no action was taken against them under canon law. In a third case, a cleric convicted by a foreign court worked in the Munich archdiocese. Pusch suggested that Ratzinger knew of the priest’s history. A Vatican spokesman said on Jan. 20: “The Holy See considers that appropriate attention should be paid to the document, whose contents are presently unknown. In coming days, following its publication, the Holy See will be able to give it a careful and detailed examination.” “In reiterating shame and remorse for abuses committed by clerics against minors, the Holy See expresses its closeness to a...
Pope’s Wednesday Audience: ‘God Is Not Afraid of Our Sins’…
“Tenderness is the best way to touch what is fragile in us. Look how nurses touch the wounds of the sick: with tenderness, so as not to hurt them more. And so the Lord touches our wounds with the same tenderness,” he said. “This is why it is important to encounter God’s mercy, especially in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in personal prayer with God, having an experience of truth and tenderness.” The pope said that God’s tenderness is “greater than the logic of the world” and can be “an unexpected way of doing justice.” “Without this ‘revolution of tenderness’ … we risk remaining imprisoned in a justice that does not allow us to get up easily and that confuses redemption with punishment,” he said. At the end of his live-streamed audience, the pope’s thoughts turned to those who are in pri...
Cardinal Parolin and Deputy Vatican Secretary of State Test Positive for COVID-19…
By Courtney Mares Vatican City, Jan 18, 2022 / 07:05 am Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra have tested positive for COVID-19, the Holy See press office confirmed on Tuesday. Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, has “very mild” symptoms, while his Venezuelan substitute, Peña Parra, is asymptomatic, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told journalists on Jan. 18. Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra meets with Pope Francis in Vatican City on August 17, 2018. . Vatican Media Both members of the Roman Curia were fully vaccinated and had received booster shots. Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity
Order of Malta Would Be ‘Subject’ of Holy See Under New Constitution, Ending Centuries of Diplomatic Independence…
Centuries of diplomatic independence for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta could come to an end if a new Vatican-drafted constitution for the order is put into effect. The new constitution could see the religious order lose its permanent observer status at the United Nations, and would imperil its bilateral diplomatic ties. The new constitution, which would explicitly define the order as a “subject” of the Holy See, would end nearly a millennia of sovereign independence for the religious order, have sweeping implications for its diplomatic relationships with more than 100 nations and the United Nations, and impact its humanitarian work around the globe. Embassy of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Bratislava, Slovakia. Credit: Philip Game / Alamy Stock Photo The new draft c...
Pope Francis Asks Catholics to Offer Their Sufferings for Christian Unity…
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity dates back to the 19th century when Pope Leo XIII encouraged the practice of a Prayer Octave for Unity. VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has asked Catholics to offer up their sufferings this week for Christian unity. During his Sunday Angelus address, the Pope called on people to participate in the upcoming Week of Prayer for Christian Unity taking place January 18-25. “We Christians, in the diversity of our confessions and traditions, are also pilgrims on our way to full unity, and we come closer to our goal the more we keep our gaze fixed on Jesus, our only Lord,” Pope Francis said from the window of the Apostolic Palace on Jan. 16. “During this week of prayer, we offer our difficulties and sufferings for the unity of Christians,” he told the crowd gathe...
Pope Francis: ‘The Holy Spirit Reforms the Church Through the Saints’…
The Theatine order became known as strong Catholic reformers even before the Protestant Reformation had fully taken hold. “Saint Cajetan evangelized Rome, Venice, Naples, and he did so above all through the witness of life and the works of mercy, practicing the great ‘protocol’ that Jesus left us with the parable of the final judgment, Matthew 25,” Pope Francis said. In 1527, the house of the Theatine order in Rome was sacked by troops of Emperor Charles V, and the members fled to Venice. At the age of 42, Cajetan founded a hospital for “incurables” in Venice, and worked to comfort and heal the sick during times of plague. More in Vatican In 1533, the pope sent Cajetan to Naples, where he founded another oratory. The corresponding church, San Paolo Maggiore, became an important...
‘Our Dear Friend and Sister Has Gone to Meet Her Lord’ — Alice Von Hildebrand Dies at 98…
Dear Friends, With sadness suffused by joy, I write to share that our beloved friend and sister Alice von Hildebrand went home to the Lord at 12:25am this morning. She died peacefully at home after a brief illness. Those who knew Lily often heard her say that the wick of her candle was growing ever shorter. In fact, she yearned for death — to see the face of Our Lord, to be reunited at last with her husband Dietrich, her parents, her dearest friend Madeleine Stebbins — with the peace that only true innocence and profound faith can grant. We will announce details of the funeral in due course. Faithfully and Gratefully, John Henry Crosby President & Founder Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity
Aiming to Clarify Viral Jargon Tweet, USCCB Says: ‘This Is How We Become a Listening Church That Journeys Together’…
Logo of the Synod of Bishops on the topic, “For a Synodal Church: communion, participation, and mission.” Credit: General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops. The U.S. bishops’ conference says it will continue encouraging engagement in a “listening Church,” after Catholics online lambasted this week a social media post about the Church’s “synod on synodality,” a global consultation process being undertaken at the behest of the Vatican. The bishops’ conference on Monday posted Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter posts containing a graphic offering “seven attitudes we can all adopt as we continue our synodal journey together.” The listed attitudes were: “innovative outlook,” “inclusivity,” “open-mindedness,” “listening,” “accompaniment,” “co-responsibility,” and “dialogue.” “Which one inspires...
Sister Marije Kaleta, Catholic Nun Who Secretly Baptized Babies Under Communism, Dies at 92…
The communist regime forced her to leave and return home to her parents seven years after entering the convent. Following her parents’ death, she lived alone and learned “to keep the faith alive in the hearts of the faithful, although secretly.” “Thanks to the consent of the priests, I kept the Blessed Sacrament in a cabinet at my home and brought it to the sick and dying,” she said. As communist rule came to an end in Albania, Kaleta was able to make her final vows in 1991. More in Europe “When I think of it, I wonder how we were able to endure such terrible sufferings, but I know the Lord gave us strength, patience and hope,” she said “The Lord gave strength to those He called, in fact he has repaid me from all my sufferings here on earth,” she added, saying that she “had the fortune of ...
