Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al Sisi has pledged to construct the nation’s largest church as part of the massive project to create a new capital city. During his official visit to St Mark’s cathedral in Cairo to join with Pope Tawadros II and other members of the Coptic Church for the January 6 Christmas celebrations,…
Category: World Report
Le Pen criticises election opponent’s Catholic credentials
French presidential contender Marine Le Pen has criticised her main rival for linking his political credentials to his Christian faith. The far-right candidate Le Pen, who has scored political points in criticising the nation’s Muslim community, stated that Francois Fillon’s referencing of his Catholic faith is at odds with France’s secular tradition. “The French are…
Vatican Roundup
Vatican watchdog raised concerns about Amoris Laetitia Just days after the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) insisted there was no threat of a ‘fraternal correction’ of Pope Francis in connection with his exhortation Amoris Laetitia, it has emerged that the Congregation itself had raised issues relating to the document…
Communion for divorced-remarried
The bishops of Malta have issued guidelines allowing for people living in “irregular” unions to receive Communion. In a new 35-page document dealing specifically with implementation of the section of the papal exhortation Amoris Laetitia on divorced-and-remarried Catholics (Chapter VIII), the bishops go beyond the language of the exhortation to stress to their priests that…
Sicily’s Great Synagogue revitalised by Church gesture
A chapel built over the ruins of the Great Synagogue of Palermo in Sicily has been transferred to the Jewish community to renew Jewish worship on the site for the first time in 500 years. An official ceremony on January 12 saw the Oratory of Santa Maria al Sabato transferred from the control of the…
Venezuelan prelate pleads for urgent distribution of emergency aid
The head of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference has issued a plea to his government to open humanitarian channels to allow the Church’s aid agency Caritas to distribute desperately needed medicines and basic goods. Addressing a gathering of his fellow prelates in Caracas, Archbishop Diego Rafael Padrón Sánchez said the ongoing economic crisis in the nation…
Threat of ‘fraternal correction’ of Pope Francis is dismissed
The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has dismissed a threat of ‘fraternal correction’ of Pope Francis in connection with the ongoing Amoris Laetitia row. In an interview with Italian TV last weekend, Cardinal Gerhard Muller responded to the earlier threat issued by Cardinal Raymond Burke that a formal correction of the…
Twenty-eight pastoral workers killed in 2016
The year 2016 saw 28 Catholic pastoral care workers die by violence worldwide. In its annual report on those religious and lay killed in the course of their work, the Church’s news body, Agenzia Fides, reveals that “in 2016 14 priests, nine religious women, one seminarian and four lay people died violently”. The Americas were…
Outpourings of solidarity as Iraqi Christians, Muslims unite at Christmas
Iraq’s Chaldean Patriarch has spoken of an outpouring of solidarity for Christians in Baghdad over the Christmas period by Muslims eager to reject the ideology and divisiveness of so-called Islamic State (ISIS). In a New Year’s interview with AsiaNews, Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako described how young Muslims travelled from the city of Najaf to attend…
Kidnapped priest appears in video appeal
The Salesian Order has confirmed that a video loaded to the Youtube site on Christmas Eve shows Fr Tom Uzhunnalil, the priest of that congregation kidnapped in Yemen last March. Visibly thin and wearing a long beard, the priest appears in the five-minute video to urge Pope Francis as well as the government of his…