Category Archives: Christianity

Former Pope Benedict warns against relaxing priestly celibacy rules

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Move could jeopardise potential plan by Pope Francis to change rules in Amazon

The former pope Benedict XVI has spoken out against allowing married men to become priests, in a move that could jeopardise a potential plan by Pope Francis to change the centuries-old requirement in areas of the Amazon.

Benedict, who implied upon his resignation in 2013 that he would not interfere with the work of his successor, has defended clerical celibacy in an explosive book written with the outspoken conservative cardinal Robert Sarah.

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Brazilian judge orders Netflix to remove ‘gay Jesus’ comedy

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Rio judge’s ruling follows complaint that the ‘honour of millions of Catholics’ was hurt by The First Temptation of Christ

A Brazilian judge on Wednesday ordered Netflix to stop showing a Christmas special that some called blasphemous for depicting Jesus as a gay man and which prompted a bomb attack on the satirists behind the programme.

The ruling by a Rio de Janeiro judge, Benedicto Abicair, responded to a petition by a Brazilian Catholic organisation that argued the “honour of millions of Catholics” was hurt by the airing of The First Temptation of Christ. The special was produced by the Rio-based film company Porta dos Fundos, whose headquarters was targeted in the Christmas Eve attack.

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‘He was sent to us’: at church rally, evangelicals worship God and Trump

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Friday’s rally recognized Trump’s need to retain the loyalty of the evangelical voting bloc that propelled him to victory in 2016

They came to pray with their president, though in truth many came just to worship him. Donald Trump’s Friday launch of his so-called “coalition of evangelicals”, an attempt to shore up the support of the religious right ahead of November’s election, had the feel of any other campaign rally, except this time with gospel music.

An estimated 7,000 “supporters of faith” packed the King Jesus international ministry megachurch in Miami to hear the word of the president, and decided that it was good. The Maga hat-wearing faithful cheered Trump’s comments on issues calculated to resonate with his churchgoing audience, including abortion, freedoms of speech and religion, and what he claimed was a “crusade” from Democrats against religious tolerance.

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Pope Francis apologises after slapping woman’s hand

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Pontiff admits ‘sometime even I lose patience’, referring to incident with pilgrim at Vatican

Pope Francis has apologised after slapping a woman’s hand as he greeted pilgrims at the Vatican on New Year’s Eve.

‌Francis lost his cool when the woman abruptly grabbed his hand and yanked him towards her just after he reached out to greet a child during a visit to the Vatican’s nativity scene on Tuesday night.

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Trump fights to keep evangelicals on his side ahead of 2020

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Recent, high-profile defections have left the president and his campaign spooked about losing a key component of his base

The US president going to church on Christmas Eve should not have attracted much attention. But it was the specific church Donald Trump chose to attend on Tuesday that raised eyebrows.

Instead of attending his usual service at the liberal church in Palm Beach, Florida, where he married his third wife, Trump instead went to a conservative Baptist-affiliated church in West Palm Beach.

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Mexican Catholic group says late leader Marcial Maciel abused at least 60 minors

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Leader of ultra-conservative group was ordered to retire over allegations, but died before facing accusers

Sexual abuse of minors was rife among superiors of the Legionaries of Christ Catholic religious order, with at least 60 boys abused by its founder, Father Marcial Maciel, a report by the group revealed.

Maciel, who died in 2008, was perhaps the Roman Catholic Church’s most notorious paedophile, even abusing children he had fathered secretly with at least two women while living a double life and being feted by the Vatican and church conservatives.

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Catholic priests in Argentina sentenced to 45 years for child abuse

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Court convicts two priests and former gardener at school for deaf students on counts of sexual abuse and corruption of minors

A court in Argentina has convicted two Roman Catholic priests and the former gardener of a church-run school for deaf students on 28 counts of sexual abuse and corruption of minors, in a case that has shaken the church in Pope Francis’s homeland.

A three-judge panel in the city of Mendoza sentenced Nicola Corradi to 42 years and Horacio Corbacho to 45 years for abusing children at the Antonio Provolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Lujan de Cuyo, a municipality in north-western Argentina.

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Scott Morrison condemns Israel Folau for linking bushfires to same-sex marriage and abortion

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Former Wallabies player’s comments in sermon follow controversy over his sacking for social media posts

Scott Morrison has labelled comments by sacked rugby union star Israel Folau linking devastating bushfires to Australia passing laws to legalise abortion and same-sex marriage “appallingly insensitive”.

Although both the prime minister and the Labor leader Anthony Albanese defended Folau’s right to express the view, condemnation on Monday was swift and bipartisan.

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Three more altar boys say they were abused by priests in Vatican

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Italian TV show to reveal alleged abuse at Vatican’s youth seminary in 1980s and 90s

Three more former altar boys have claimed they were sexually abused by two priests in the Vatican, as the child abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic church zeroed in for a second time on its headquarters.

The allegations of abuse in the Vatican’s youth seminary, to be set out in an Italian TV show on Sunday, date back to the 1980s and 90s when the boys were aged between 10 and 14.

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Donald Trump plans to make foreign aid conditional on religious freedom

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President wants to apportion aid based on how countries treat religious minorities

White House officials are reportedly drafting plans to make US foreign aid conditional on how countries treat their religious minorities, in an effort that is seen as a sop to Christian evangelicals in Donald Trump’s base.

The move, which threatens to impose further constraints on a US foreign aid policy already heavily restricted under the Trump administration, was first reported by Politico after briefings from White House aides.

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How an isolated group of Mormons got caught up in Mexico’s cartel wars

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The deaths of nine women and children has thrust into focus a small religious community and their long history in a remote corner of northern Mexico

Amid the scrubby foothills of Sonora’s Sierra Madre mountains, they farmed pomegranates and pistachios, raised large families and preached a fundamentalist Mormon faith.

Related: Child survivors of massacred family spent 10 hours hiding in Mexican hills

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Mexico: hymns and tears as victims of attack on Mormon families are buried

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  • Dozens of vehicles from US travel to La Mora to mourn victims
  • Mayor of La Mora in Sonora state says violence has worsened

With Mexican soldiers standing guard, a mother and two sons were carried to the grave in hand-hewn pine coffins on Thursday at the first funeral for the victims of a drug cartel ambush that left nine Mexican American women and children dead.

Clad in shirtsleeves, suits or modest dresses, about 500 mourners embraced in grief under white tents erected in La Mora, a hamlet of about 300 people who consider themselves Mormon but are not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some wept, and some sang hymns.

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Pope apologises for theft of Amazon statue from Rome church

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Incident at end of Francis’s Amazon synod blamed on conservatives and ‘racists’

Pope Francis has apologised to Amazonian bishops and tribal leaders after thieves stole indigenous statues from a church close to the Vatican and tossed them into the River Tiber in a show of conservative opposition to the first Latin American pope.

Speaking as “the bishop of Rome”, Francis dismissed allegations that the wooden statues of naked pregnant women were pagan symbols and said they had been placed in the church “without any intention of idolatry”.

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British bishop rebukes Sydney Anglican leader’s call for gay marriage supporters to leave church

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Bishop of Liverpool says he regrets that Archbishop Glenn Davies ‘seems to want to exclude people rather than to engage with them’

A senior Church of England bishop has expressed regret at comments by the Archbishop of Sydney that supporters of marriage equality should leave the Anglican church.

Reflecting sharp divisions within the global Anglican communion over LGBT+ issues, the Bishop of Liverpool, Paul Bayes, said: “I regret that the archbishop [of Sydney] seems to want to exclude people rather than to engage with them within the wider Anglican family.”

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Pro-gay marriage Anglicans are walking a fine line in the Australian church | Andrew West

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The blunt words of Sydney archbishop Glenn Davies come at a critical moment for Australian churches and demands for religious freedom

For a man renowned for his civility, the language was blunt. During his annual speech to the Anglican Church’s Sydney synod, Archbishop Glenn Davies told supporters of same-sex marriage to “please leave us”.

“My own view is that if people wish to change the doctrine of our church, they should start a new church or join a church more aligned to their views,” he said. “But do not ruin the Anglican Church by abandoning the plain teaching of scripture.”

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Melbourne Anglicans vote to express ‘sorrow’ over blessing of same-sex marriages

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Melbourne synod’s vote comes days after Sydney archbishop said Anglicans who back same-sex marriage should leave church

Melbourne’s Anglican church has formally voted to record its “sorrow” over a regional Victorian diocese’s decision to bless same-sex marriages.

The nod of approval given by the Wangaratta diocese in August has angered the Melbourne church’s governing body.

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John Henry Newman is first Briton to be canonised in 43 years

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Prince Charles described Victorian theologian as a ‘fearless defender of the truth’

Prince Charles described John Henry Newman as a “fearless defender of the truth” after the British cardinal became a saint in front of an estimated 20,000 pilgrims in St Peter’s Square.

Newman, also a theologian, scholar and poet, was regarded as one of the most influential figures of the Victorian age and is the first Briton to be made a saint since 1976, when John Ogilvie was canonised by Pope Paul VI.

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Australian Christian Lobby backs sacking of employees with no ‘Christian sexual ethic’

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ACL director Martyn Iles says businesses should have greater powers to hire and fire, but denies Christians have a ‘special vendetta’ against LGBT people

The Australian Christian Lobby has backed calls for religious businesses such as aged care providers to gain more powers of hiring and firing employees who do not conform to religious teachings.

In a debate at the National Press Club on Wednesday the ACL director Martyn Iles backed calls from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference for greater powers to fire employees who don’t conform to a “Christian sexual ethic” but claimed Christians don’t have a “special vendetta” against the LGBT community.

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The Immoral Majority review: how evangelicals backed Trump – and how they might atone

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As a scandal-ridden presidency lurches towards impeachment, Ben Howe offers valuable insight into how it came to this

In his new book, Ben Howe attempts to explain something that should never have occurred: why most white evangelicals voting in 2016 chose Donald Trump.

Many observers thought Trump could not win because evangelical Christians could not support someone whose life (and tweeting) was so at odds with their beliefs and practices. Indeed, Trump failed to win a majority of evangelicals in any Super Tuesday primary.

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