There is only a slim chance of Vatican approval for resolutions calling for a relaxation of celibacy rules for priests and for permitting women to be deacons.
Europe
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Pope Francis sends Pope Benedict ‘a beautiful letter’ showing ‘full support,’ former pope’s secretary says
In the letter, Pope Francis “speaks as a shepherd, as a brother” and “expressed once again his complete trust, his full support and also his prayers,” said the secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein.
Posted inFaith, News
Fourth Anglican bishop in less than a year received into Catholic Church
Peter Forster, 71, is the fourth Anglican bishop to be received into the Catholic faith in less than a year and the fifth to become a Catholic in the past two years.
Posted inFaith, News
Pope Francis: I’m no saint. I couldn’t be pope without my friends.
“That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t go to live in the papal apartment, because the popes before me were saints and I couldn’t do it—I’m not so much a saint,” the pope said on Feb. 6 during a primetime Italian talk show.
Posted inFaith, Podcasts
Podcast: How Benedict XVI should respond to the German abuse report
This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle and veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell discuss Gerry’s interview with Hans Zollner, S.J., a leading abuse prevention expert based at the Vatican.
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Father Hans Zollner on the German sex abuse report, Pope Benedict and the future of the church
Father Zollner is the president of the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection. He has been one of the few people in Rome willing to speak on the record about the Munich report.
Posted inDispatches, Faith
A bombshell report on sex abuse left France ‘flabbergasted.’ Yet most French Catholics still believe there is hope for reform
The report landed on French Catholics like a bomb. French bishops had never considered sexual abuse a serious problem. “We have been in denial for 20 years,” Father Goujon said. “The bishops said that [that kind of abuse] could never happen here.”
Posted inFaith, News
Cardinal Marx: Having married priests ‘would be better for everyone’
“For some priests, it would be better if they were married—not just for sexual reasons, but because it would be better for their life and they wouldn’t be lonely,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx said in a newspaper interview.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Pope Francis to tax collectors: Taxation done well is a sign of justice for the poor
Taxation “must favor the redistribution of wealth, looking out for the dignity of the poorest who risk always ending up crushed by the powerful,” the pope said in a meeting with members of Italy’s tax collection agency.
Posted inFaith, Podcasts
Podcast: What you need to know about Pope Benedict’s record on sexual abuse
This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle and veteran Vatican reporter Gerard O’Connell explain what we know so far about the four cases Pope Emeritus Benedict was implicated in.