ROME: A Catholic cleric around 60 gets a major Vatican gig, where, among other things, he issues controversial pronouncements on sexual morality. At a certain point, it’s revealed that years before, he wrote a book in which he dealt with sexually explicit topics such as orgasms, creating scandal among sensitive souls who believe it’s inappropriate…
Pope Francis revealed his intention to be buried at Rome’s Basilica of St Mary Major, reflecting his intense personal devotion to Mary and the famed icon of Salus Populi Romani contained in its Borghese chapel. Francis thus will become the sixth pontiff to be interred in the basilica, joining Pius V, Sixtus V, Paul V, Clement IX…
Letter From Rome H.L. Mencken once famously quipped that love is like war, in that it’s easy to begin but very hard to stop. Had Mencken plied his journalistic trade in the internet age, he might well have added rumours to that list, which are notoriously easy these days to put into circulation and virtually…
John L. Allen Jr It’s rare indeed when an American president takes part in a four-way conversation and was, arguably, the least remarkable person in the group, but such was the case in June 1975 when President Gerald Ford made a visit to the Vatican. On that occasion, Ford met Pope Paul VI, today St…
When you’re talking about the Catholic Church, you need to be awfully careful about using the word “unprecedented” to describe any new development. This is an institution with more than 2,000 years of history, which has seen just about every vicissitude imaginable, and its opposite, over that span. As the late Cardinal Francis George of…
Leaders often speak at least as loudly by what they don’t say as by what they do, and such would appear to be the case in recent days regarding Pope Francis’s approach to Israel and the broader Jewish world. A series of perceived papal slights began in late October, when a group of family members…
Wars, especially in the 21st Century, are fought on multiple levels. Beyond what happens on the battlefield, there’s also the ‘soft power’ contest to claim the high moral ground, and in that sense, one of the emerging fronts in the bloody conflict in Gaza now pits Israel against the Christian leadership of the Holy Land.…
As first reported by Loup Besmond of La Croix, Pope Francis apparently is considering imposing pontifical secrecy on the upcoming Synod of Bishops on synodality, not simply on opinions and votes, as was past practice, but on all issues addressed during synod discussions. The stated aim would be to protect the frankness and honesty of…
Yesterday Crux carried two stories which, at first blush, appear unrelated. The first concerned the latest Ukrainian backlash against Pope Francis’s praise of “Great Mother Russia,” while the second covered the discovery of a previously unnoticed bit of anti-fascist graffiti from the WWII years in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Yet pushing beyond the headlines, the two stories do actually…
In just a little over a month, the curtain will rise on a keenly anticipated Synod of Bishops on Synodality in Rome. Though notoriously difficult to define, ‘synodality’ generally refers to the idea of the whole Church journeying together, with members listening to one another in establishing priorities and policies. To date, much of the…