The simplest and most robust solution for the tendency of elected officials to hold on to office beyond their capacity to serve is a mirror image of the age limits we already have: a constitutional amendment restricting eligibility for our nation’s higher offices to those under 75.
Pope Benedict XVI
Posted inFaith in Focus
What Cardinal Ratzinger, a deconstructing friend and a woman religious taught me about doubt
Doubt assures travelers they are still on the right path, even as it takes them to the very edge.
Posted inFilm
The complicated relationship between Catholics and ‘The Conjuring’ horror franchise
“The Conjuring: Last Rites,” like others films in the series, capitalizes on Catholic imagery without Catholic endorsement.
Posted inExplainer
How do popes celebrate their birthdays? Pizza, parties and puppies
Pope Leo turns 70 on Sunday. How will he celebrate his big day? And how has the church celebrated past popes on their natal feasts?
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
I learned to love the last three popes. I look forward to embracing the next one, too.
No one gathers Christians—Catholics and non-Catholics alike—throughout the world, however imperfectly, in the way the pope does. The world needs the pope.
Posted inFaith, News
Pope tailors aren’t expecting a typical order for cassocks to outfit the new pontiff
The conclave that begins next Wednesday to elect a successor for Pope Francis is the first in 46 ½ years for which the Vatican hasn’t ordered a set of cassocks from the two best-known papal tailors.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
What happens when a pope dies or resigns?
What happens when a pope dies or resigns? Tom Reese, S.J., explains the steps in detail of what will occur at the Vatican after a pope’s death.
Posted inFaith, News Analysis
What Pope Francis’ voice memo reveals about his understanding of the papacy
Just as Popes John Paul II’s and Benedict’s final days revealed their understandings of the papacy, Francis’ illness has revealed him once again as the world’s parish priest, suffering close to his people.
Posted inFaith, News
Richard Williamson, excommunicated bishop who denied Holocaust, dies
Richard Williamson, an ultra-traditionalist Catholic bishop whose denial of the Holocaust created a scandal in 2009 when Pope Benedict XVI rehabilitated him and other members of his breakaway society, has died.
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Report: The long, strange journey of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
Colleen Dulle reports on Archbishop Vigano’s trajectory from Vatican civil servant to excommunicant.