A new survey indicates that many Catholics in Latin America and the U.S. favor allowing women to become priests, with a number also supporting marriage for priests, birth control, same-sex marriage recognition and holy Communion for unmarried couples living together.
Latin America
Posted inPolitics & Society, The Weekly Dispatch
The killing of an eco-defender in Honduras highlights a global problem of impunity
Juan López was gunned down as he was leaving Mass by a still unidentified assassin, becoming the latest casualty among defenders of creation and Indigenous and human rights in Honduras.
Posted inFaith, News
Diocese sues immigration agencies over rule change that could force thousands of foreign-born priests to leave
The Diocese of Paterson, N.J., argues that the change “will cause severe and substantial disruption to the lives and religious freedoms” of the priests as well as the hundreds of thousands of Catholics they serve.
Posted inFaith, News
Vatican expels founder of Peru’s influential Sodalitium religious movement after probe into sexual abuse
The movement was founded in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God,” one of several Catholic societies born as a conservative reaction to the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept through Latin America
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Jesuits urge Ortega to ‘stop the repression’ on one year anniversary of Nicaragua’s government seizing university
Jesuits: The “unpunished and unjustified confiscation” of UCA has done “inestimable damage to the scientific and cultural heritage of Nicaragua.”
Posted inFaith, News
At least 11 priests arrested in increasingly totalitarian Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan regime has detained at least 11 Catholic clergy, in a further blow to the beleaguered Diocese of Matagalpa.
Posted inPolitics & Society, The Weekly Dispatch
Maduro’s third term in Venezuela could mean more migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
Hopes for political change in Venezuela were dashed just hours after polls closed when the National Electoral Council declared that Nicholás Maduro had been elected to a third term as president.
Posted inFaith, News
Pope Francis makes ‘reparation’ by moving Argentina’s primatial see from Buenos Aires to a provincial city
Pope Francis has designated the provincial city of Santiago del Estero as Argentina’s primatial see in a move described by Catholic leaders as a historic “reparation” and a reflection of his preference for putting the peripheries at the center of church attention.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
A rare Jesuit opera inspired by St. Francis Xavier
The opera ‘San Xavier’ provides a glimpse of how Jesuits evangelized with music—a key dimension of the 1986 film “The Mission.”
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
In a surprise to environmentalists and church leaders, Brazil’s Lula revives plans for offshore oil drilling in Amazon basin
The most controversial blocks for exploration are located offshore at the mouth of the Amazon River basin. Petrobras, a government-controlled oil company, is pushing to begin preliminary drilling in search of new oil reserves.