The pope’s visit comes only two years after the Vatican acknowledged that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys.
Loyalist paramilitaries played a central role in organizing the unrest in Belfast, but it was a surprise on both sides of the northern Irish border when they were joined by self-proclaimed “Irish patriots” from the Republic of Ireland.
Gerald O'Collins, S.J., the Australian Jesuit theologian who died last week, was a prominent writer in Christology, ecclesiology, spirituality and more in an academic career that spanned seven decades.