Austen Ivereigh

The story is breaking that Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting the UK next year possibly to beatify Cardinal Newman But neither Downing St nor the Holy See are confirming or saying when — so there s really not a lot to report And given that we knew he was going to visit next year at some point

I was about to post on the exciting arrival in England of St Therese of Lisieux s relics when I saw what Pope Benedict XVI yesterday told the Brazilian bishops He said The lay faithful must undertake to give expression in real life – also through political commitment – to the Christian view o

The result of Rome s investigation known as an apostolic visitation into the Legionaries of Christ will result in either the dissolution or the re-founding of the order according to sources close to the Legionaries in Spain There a Basque bishop Ricardo Blazquez is in charge of the visitati

Not long after I posted on the need for some pro-lifers to learn the democratic and Christian art of civility the Catholic News Agency — not to be confused with the highly respected Church-run Catholic News Service — ran an item provocatively entitled Murder of Michigan pro-lifer a lsquo non-

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has given a double-page interview to Osservatore Romano the papal newspaper in which he talks of his conversion to Catholicism and how faith is at the heart of his life and work Both Osservatore and the Guardian which reports the interview headline Blair s am

Today s Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is a good day to link to Fred Clark s brilliant explanation of why vampires can t abide crosses Most vampires don t believe in the cross but that hardly matters It s the idea of the thing that gives them fits The cross confronts vampires with th

There have been no peace outcomes from Pope Benedict XVI s visit to the Holy Land in May according to the Patriarch of Jerusalem ldquo The Pope came as a man of dialogue he called for peace But until now we haven rsquo t seen any fruit from this visit Archbishop Fouad Twal told The Tablet o

Incivility hurts the pro-life cause posts John Allen referring to how some activists act so shrill so angry and judgmental that fair-minded people simply tune out the pro-life message He refers to the extraordinary fury — not to mention the nastiness and loopiness — of the attacks generat

All I know of the Bishop of Palencia in northern Spain Jose Ignacio Munilla is what I ve raked from Google which isn t much But he s mentioned because I was struck by an answer he gives in an interview to a question about the Spanish Church s failure to prevent the Spanish government s further l

Nervous church authorities are preventing Napolitans from kissing the phial containing the blood of San Gennaro during his festival later this month because of swine flu fears Reuters has the story In one of Italy s best-known festivals Saint Gennaro s dried blood is said to liquefy twice a yea