Category Archives: Christianity

Tributes and reaction as ex-pope Benedict XVI dies aged 95 – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more about the death of Benedict XVI here

The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, says he is saddened to learn of Benedict XVI’s death.

His visit to UK in 2010 was a “historic moment for both Catholics and non Catholics”, he adds.

Today I join with the church throughout the world, and especially with the Holy Father, Pope Francis, and all in the Catholic Church, in mourning the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

In Pope Benedict’s long life and ministry of service to Christ in His Church he saw many profound changes in the church and in the world. He lived through the Nazi regime in Germany and served briefly in the Second World War. As a younger theologian and priest he witnessed first-hand the discussions of the Second Vatican Council. As a professor and then as an Archbishop he lived in a divided Germany but saw too the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of his homeland.

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Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis call for end to war in Ukraine

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Pontiff says world suffering from ‘famine of peace’ as Justin Welby praises example of late monarch

The archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis have used their Christmas addresses to call for an end to the war in Ukraine.

During his sermon, Justin Welby also spoke of those suffering “immense anxiety and hardship” during the cost of living crisis and made reference to the “desperate struggles of hospital wards”.

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Excavations reveal pilgrims’ lamps and inscriptions at ‘tomb of Salome’

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Finds at site west of Jerusalem named after woman said to have assisted at the birth of Jesus Christ

Archaeologists have unveiled pilgrims’ lamps and other finds from the ”tomb of Salome”, a burial site named after a woman said to have assisted at the birth of Christ.

The tomb was discovered by grave robbers in what is now Tel Lachish national park, west of Jerusalem, in the 1980s.

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Anti-abortion US priest Frank Pavone defrocked by Vatican

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Pavone had been investigated for placing an aborted foetus on an altar and posting a video of it online

The Vatican has defrocked the anti-abortion US priest Frank Pavone for what it said were “blasphemous communications on social media” as well as “persistent disobedience” of his bishop.

A letter to US bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the US, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, said the decision against Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken and that there was no chance for an appeal.

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Ukraine’s security service raids Russian-backed monastery in Kyiv

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SBU and police swoop on suspected ‘subversive activities by Russian special services’

Ukraine’s SBU security service and police have raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”.

Located south of the city centre, the sprawling Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex – or Kyiv Monastery of the Caves – is the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church that falls under the Moscow patriarchate, as well as being a Ukrainian cultural treasure and a Unesco World Heritage site.

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Nun who wowed The Voice of Italy becomes waitress in Spain

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Cristina Scuccia, who stunned judges in 2014 contest, explains decision to leave nunhood on talkshow

A nun who became a singing sensation after winning Italy’s version of The Voice has stunned TV viewers again after announcing that she has kicked the habit and is now a waitress in Spain.

Sister Cristina Scuccia, from Sicily, shocked judges, including the late Raffaella Carrà, during her blind audition for the show in 2014, giving a rapturous performance of the Alicia Keys’ hit song No One. After realising the incredible voice belonged to a nun, Carrà, who died last year, said: “I couldn’t speak for several minutes.”

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Female clergy face ‘institutionalised discrimination’, campaigners claim

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Church of England is ‘still discriminating against women’ 30 years after allowing them to become priests

Thirty years after the Church of England took the historic step of allowing women to become priests, equality campaigners say female clergy still face “institutionalised discrimination”.

Fewer than one in three paid clergy are female, according to 2020 data – the most recent published – although the same source showed more women (55%) than men had begun training for the priesthood.

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French cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard admits to abusing 14-year-old girl 35 years ago

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Ricard released a statement confessing to sexually abusing the child during his early days in the Catholic Church

One of France’s highest-ranking prelates of the Catholic Church has admitted abusing a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago and announced his withdrawal from his religious duties.

Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard issued a written statement on Monday after a report issued last year revealed a “massive phenomenon” of sexual abusers of children operating for decades within the French Catholic Church.

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Orthodox church of Ukraine allows worshippers to celebrate Christmas on 25 December

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Move away from traditional date of 7 January directed against pro-Putin head of Russian Orthodox church

For centuries Ukrainians have celebrated Christmas on 7 January, the date on which Jesus was born, according to the Julian calendar.

But following Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February, the Orthodox church of Ukraine is allowing its congregations for the first time to celebrate Christmas on 25 December, in a move away from Russia and towards the west.

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New Orleans priest accused of child rape now under scrutiny for financial crimes

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Audit details potential irregularities in which nearly $400,000 of church congregants’ funds were allegedly misused

A Catholic priest who led one of New Orleans’ best-known inner-city churches until being accused of sexually molesting a child has been reported to federal authorities for possible financial crimes after an audit found he spent nearly $400,000 of his congregants’ money in questionable ways.

John Asare-Dankwah ran the St Peter Claver church in New Orleans’ historic Treme neighborhood from 2014 until early 2021, when a lawsuit alleging that he raped a boy on an out-of-state overnight trip years earlier prompted church officials to indefinitely suspend him from his role.

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Boebert tells Republican dinner guests they’re part of ‘second coming of Jesus’

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Colorado representative told Tennessee members ‘there is a calling’ and that ‘it is an honor to serve in this time’

Republican Colorado representative Lauren Boebert has told a group of party members that they “get to be part of ushering in the second coming of Jesus”, prompting shock and mockery online.

At a dinner hosted by Knox county Republican party in Tennessee on Wednesday, Boebert addressed the guests by saying, “I want to start with two words: ‘Let’s go Brandon’” referring to a vulgar anti-Joe Biden slogan before adding, “In all seriousness, there is a calling on each and every one of you to be involved and to rise up.

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New Orleans lawyer fined for alerting school to priest’s past sexual misconduct

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Richard Trahant was fined $400,000 for violating confidentiality rules around a bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese

A New Orleans attorney who represents victims of clerical sexual abuse faces a $400,000 fine after alerting a local Catholic high school that a priest who worked there once admitted to fondling and kissing a teen girl he met at another church institution.

The lawyer, Richard Trahant, said he would appeal against the hefty sanction handed to him on Tuesday, which stemmed from a federal judge’s ruling that his alert violated confidentiality rules governing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese.

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C of E must welcome gay people or face questions in parliament, says MP

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Labour’s Ben Bradshaw says church is ‘actively pursuing a campaign of discrimination’ against lesbian and gay people

The Church of England must move swiftly to welcome lesbian and gay people and embrace same-sex marriage or face mounting questions in parliament about its role as the established church of the country, a senior MP has said.

The church was “actively pursuing a campaign of discrimination” against lesbian and gay people that was incompatible with its role as a church for England, said Ben Bradshaw, the Labour MP for Exeter and a former secretary of state for culture, media and sport.

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Pope urges Italians to help migrants as far right tipped to win election

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Francis said migrants and refugees should be able to ‘live in peace and with dignity’ at open-air mass in Matera

Pope Francis has urged Italians to help migrants as voting proceeded in a general election widely expected to bring an anti-immigration rightwing coalition into power.

Speaking at the end of an open-air mass in the southern Italian city of Matera, the pope recalled that Sunday coincided with the Catholic church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees. “Migrants are to be welcomed, accompanied, promoted and integrated,” he told the assembled faithful.

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Church of England bars Desmond Tutu’s daughter from officiating at funeral

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Church says same-sex marriage means Mpho Tutu van Furth cannot preside over godfather’s service

The daughter of the late Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu has been barred by the Church of England from officiating at her godfather’s funeral in a Shropshire church because she is married to a woman.

Mpho Tutu van Furth, an ordained priest in the Anglican church, was invited to preside over the funeral of Martin Kenyon, who died last week at the age of 92. The C of E said its actions were “in line with the House of Bishops current guidance on same-sex marriage”.

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Bolsonaro tries red scare tactics in Brazil election by raising spectre of Nicaragua

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Brazil’s far-right president claims that leftwing rival Lula will repress clergy like Ortega but so far with little apparent success

More than 4,000km and an ideological abyss separate the capitals of Nicaragua and Brazil, where an acrimonious race for the presidency is under way.

But the Central American country has found itself at the centre of Brazil’s election debate as its far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro seeks to weaponise Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian crackdown on the Catholic church to attack his leftist challenger, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Irish teacher jailed for breaching court order to stay away from school

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Enoch Burke, who had also refused to refer to pupil as ‘they’, spent 11 days in prison

A school teacher in Ireland who refused to call a transgender pupil by the pronoun “they” has spent 11 days in prison for ignoring a court order to stay away from the school.

Enoch Burke failed to obtain a court injunction on Wednesday that would have paved his release and return to school, leaving him in Mountjoy prison in Dublin.

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Christians in the US could be a minority group by 2070, study finds

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All four of the Pew Research Center’s scenarios showed the Christian share of the population shrinking and the number of non-believers rising

Christians in the US may become a minority group by 2070 if recent trends continue, according to data released by the Pew Research Center.

To predict how the US religious landscape will change over the next 50 years, the center posed several questions: “What if Christians keep leaving religion at the same rate observed in recent years? What if the pace of religious switching continues to accelerate? What if switching were to stop, but other demographic trends – such as migration, births and deaths – were to continue at current rates?”

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Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

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The Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s governor spoke during a video call hosted by a Christian nationalist group member

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

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‘We need your help’: Bishops plead with UK to aid drought-ravaged Horn of Africa

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Open letter from 44 Anglican leaders contrasts ‘generous’ British response to Ukraine with ‘dire need’ still unmet in their countries

Dozens of bishops from drought-ravaged east Africa have appealed to the UK government to urgently get more funding to those in need, warning that Britain’s rapid response to the Ukraine crisis must not come at the expense of lives elsewhere.

As the worst drought for four decades tightens its grip on Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, with millions facing acute hunger, the group of 44 Anglican bishops criticised the international community for not paying attention to early warnings or backing up rhetoric with sufficient funds.

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