Signs Of the Times

Violence against women, cultural pressures regarding women’s physical appearance, attitudes that subjugate women or that ignore male-female differences and the growing alienation of women from the church in some parts of the world are themes the Pontifical Council for Culture is set to explore

Pope Francis has decided that the public ceremony of investiture of metropolitan archbishops with the pallium will henceforth take place in the prelates’ home dioceses, not in the Vatican as has been the case under recent pontiffs.He believes that in this way the ceremony “will greatly f

The world’s first Jesuit community college—Arrupe College of Loyola University Chicago—is scheduled to open at the university’s Water Tower Campus on Aug. 17. The college, named for the late Pedro Arrupe, S.J., a former Jesuit superior general, aims to provide prospective stu

The cause for the beatification of Chiara Lubich, founder of the international Focolare Movement, was opened on Jan. 27 in a celebration in the Cathedral of Frascati, near Rome. • Shower facilities for homeless people in Rome will open in St. Peter’s Square on Feb. 15, but the service wil

Skin color is a evolutionary accident of geography. That does not mean racism isn’t real.

Using a phrase long associated with the civil rights movement, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley. O.F.M.Cap., of Boston told an overflow crowd in Washington, D.C. “We shall overcome” in the fight against abortion. In his homily on Jan. 21 during the opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigi

On the weekend after President Obama’s historic announcement on Dec. 17 that he wanted to re-establish diplomatic ties with communist Cuba, I visited a park in Miami’s Little Havana section.Cuban exiles were holding a protest against normalizing relations with Havana, which were severed

Minneapolis on Jan. 16 became the 12th U.S. Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy protection because of the unmanageable costs of settlements and future claims resulting from sexual abuse by clergy. • The number of people falling victim to the Ebola virus in West Africa—where at least 8

Families who have many children do not cause poverty, Pope Francis said. The main culprit is “an economic system that has removed the human person from its focus and has placed the god of money” as its priority instead, he said on Jan. 21. On the flight back from Manila to Rome, the pope

Underlining the failure of the Nigerian government to stop the violent rampage of Boko Haram, a Catholic bishop has called for Western military intervention. The Muslim militant group’s increasingly deadly assaults and expanded recruitment from countries across North Africa mean “a conce