Looking at images of carnage and mayhem flowing out of Syria today, especially the ferocious fighting over the city of Aleppo, it’s clear that the country is in crisis, and it often feels difficult to make a compelling case for hope that there’s any future beyond bloodshed and heartache. Difficult, that is, until you meet…
John L. Allen Jr.
Famed exorcist proved you don’t have to play the clerical game
Although logically we know the end has to come for everyone, there are certain personalities so indomitable, so larger than life, that in practical terms we come to regard them as virtually immortal. Back in the late 1990s and 2000s, I said that when Pope John Paul II finally died, those most stunned would be…
Ten years on, it’s time to appreciate Benedict’s point about Islam
September 12 marked the 10th anniversary of perhaps the most controversial papal speech of the last half-century, an address given by emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006, which sparked a firestorm of protest across the Islamic world. In the opening section of the speech, Benedict cited a 14th-Century dialogue between a Byzantine…
Francis says the people have spoken: ‘Two Popes are just fine’
Sometimes leaders learn more from crowds than from polls about how passionately people are feeling something, and in his preface to a new biography of Benedict XVI, Francis suggests crowds have taught him that ordinary Catholics are just fine with the two-Pope arrangement. Arthur Schlesinger once said that President John F. Kennedy could look at…
Pope’s choice for new Vatican post boosts moderates, Americans
By choosing Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas as the first-ever head of his new department for family, laity and life issues, Pope Francis has handed a big win to pastoral moderates in the Church and also laid to rest concerns that he’s somehow hostile to Americans. (Farrell, 68, isn’t American by birth since he was…
Memo to Pope Francis: For God’s sake, take a break!
Pope Francis has a prodigious, and deeply admirable, work ethic, but there are three good reasons why this Energizer Bunny of a pope might want to consider following the Italian lead for ferragosto and taking a break in mid-August. Monday marks an Italian holiday called ferragosto, which now coincides with the feast of the Assumption of Mary,…
Pope Francis delivers homage to John Paul II with morning of mercy
With a visit Saturday morning to the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy in Lagiewniki and then a Mass at Krakow’s sprawling Sanctuary of St John Paul II, Pope Francis paid homage to his storied predecessor Saturday morning and to St Faustina Kowalska, whose legacies hang over his Year of Mercy. Popes pay tribute to their predecessors…
Keeper of the flame
He may be a lion in winter today, but under St Pope John Paul II no one had a more vital role than Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who next week will be hosting an estimated 1.5 to 1.8 million young people in the city of Krakow for World Youth Day. If you want a window into…
Framing the bottom line on opposition to Pope Francis
There’s no novelty in the idea of opposition to Popes, either from the Catholic hierarchy or the grassroots. What’s likely new today is the Pope’s own style, the media universe, and the accelerating polarisation of the culture, which makes everything seem louder and nastier. Anyone with eyes can see that there’s alarm and opposition to…
Vatican’s old guard may have notched a Pyrrhic victory
On July 9, Pope Francis issued an edict restoring several financial powers to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), taking them away from Australian Cardinal George Pell and his Secretariat for the Economy. With power, however, also comes the blame if something goes wrong. There are many ways of analysing the…