Category Archives: Christianity

Priest accused of abusing Inuit children in Canada will not be dismissed by church

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Senior church officials in Rome decline to act, citing worsening health of French clergyman known as ‘devil priest’

A French clergyman dubbed the “devil priest” who stands accused of sexually abusing Inuit children in Canada’s north will not be dismissed from his congregation after senior church officials in Rome declined to act, citing the nonagenarian’s declining health.

Johannes Rivoire, a priest with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, worked in several Canadian Arctic communities in the 1960s and 70s before returning to France in 1993.

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Pastor says Welby would not meet him if he spoke at Palestine rally with Corbyn

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Archbishop said he could not meet Bethlehem Lutheran Munther Isaac if he shared platform with former Labour leader, Isaac says

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, cancelled plans to meet the Bethlehem-based Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac, saying he could not meet him if he shared a platform with the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at a pro-Palestinian rally, the pastor has said.

Isaac, the pastor of the Christmas Evangelical Lutheran church in Bethlehem, who has been highly critical of Israel in Gaza, saw his Christmas sermon go viral when he said if Jesus Christ was born today it would have been under the rubble.

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Westminster Abbey agrees ‘in principle’ to return sacred tablet to Ethiopia

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Carved wooden tabot has been at Abbey since British forces looted it at Battle of Maqdala in 1868

Westminster Abbey has agreed “in principle” to returning a sacred tablet to the Ethiopian Orthodox church, igniting a debate around restitution claims made by the East African nation.

The tabot – a blackened flat piece of wood featuring a carved inscription that symbolically represents the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments – has been at the Abbey since British forces returned with it from the Battle of Maqdala, where it was looted in 1868.

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‘Places of the living’: bishop of Norwich calls for churchyards to be rewilded

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Graham Usher urges Church of England to look into this ‘often very ancient land’, as it prepares to vote on increasing biodiversity

Churchyards should be rewilded to increase biodiversity and to make them “places of the living, not just the dead”, a Church of England bishop has said.

Local parishes are responsible for about 7,100 hectares (17,500 acres) of churchyards in England. The C of E also owns about 34,000 hectares of farmland, mostly let to tenant farmers, and 9,300 hectares of forestry.

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C of E refutes claims of ‘conveyor belt’ of asylum seeker fake conversions

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Suella Braverman and a former priest accuse church but Justin Welby says its role has been mischaracterised

The Church of England has refuted a claim that it operated a “conveyor belt for asylum seeker fake conversions”, saying parish records disproved the eye-catching allegation.

Churches have been at the centre of a storm over “fake conversions” in the past week after it emerged that Abdul Ezedi, the Afghan man suspected of a chemical attack on a woman and two children in Clapham, was granted asylum on his third attempt after converting to Christianity. Police said on Friday that Ezedi was believed to be dead.

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‘Profane’ or ‘innocent’? Row over Canterbury Cathedral silent disco

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Critics say dance event sends message that ‘Christians do not take their faith or their holy places seriously’

From south London’s Ministry of Sound to Ibiza’s legendary superclub Pacha, everyone has a favourite venue for dancing the night away. And now a rave in the nave may be about to join that illustrious list.

More than 3,000 people were expected to take to the floor across four sessions of Canterbury Cathedral’s 90s silent disco to dance to the likes of the Spice Girls, Vengaboys and Eminem, in an event that officials hope will serve to attract a new generation of worshippers to the building’s hallowed cloisters.

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‘The Lord told us to’: US pastor says he stole $1m from Christians to remodel home

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Couple are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as ‘INDXcoin’, to Christian community in Denver, Colorado

A Colorado pastor who is charged with stealing more than $1m from his Christian community in a cryptocurrency scheme has admitted to the fraud but argued that God instructed him to carry it out.

Eli Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn, are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as “INDXcoin”, to Christians based in their home town of Denver, Colorado, allegedly telling would-be investors that the Lord had told him people would become rich if they invested, the state’s division of securities announced in a press release on Thursday.

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‘War hurts our hearts’: silent multi-faith peace walk held in London

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Hundreds follow route to Parliament Square in solidarity with people affected by Israel-Gaza conflict

Without flags, placards or chants, hundreds of people joined a silent multi-faith peace walk in London on Sunday in response to the Israel-Gaza war.

Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists walked side-by-side from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square and back in solidarity with people affected by the conflict in the Middle East.

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‘Sexual pleasure a gift from God’ but avoid porn, Pope Francis advises

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Pontiff thought be be responding to conservative critics after sexually explicit book by cardinal resurfaces

“Sexual pleasure is a gift from God” but Catholics must avoid pornography, Pope Francis has said.

The pontiff made the remarks during a catechesis devoted to the “vice of lust” at his general audience in Saint Peter’s Square on Wednesday.

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Shia LaBeouf mulls plan to become deacon after Catholic confirmation

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Actor, 37, received sacrament on New Year’s Eve and Capuchin friar Alexander Rodriguez says he wishes to be a deacon ‘in the future’

The Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf is seeking to becoming a Catholic deacon after receiving the sacrament of confirmation on New Year’s Eve.

A California-based chapter of the Capuchin Franciscans, a Catholic religious order, shared the news in a Facebook post on Tuesday alongside photos of the 37-year-old actor smiling next to several of the organization’s members.

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Vatican: same-sex couples ruling is not endorsement of homosexuality

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New practice does not endorse homosexuality but is not heretical, Catholic church says amid opposition from some bishops

The Vatican has stressed that allowing priests to bless same-sex couples is not an endorsement of homosexuality, but neither is it blasphemous, after some Catholic bishops reacted negatively to the measure announced last month.

Pope Francis approved a ruling in December allowing priests to bless unmarried and same-sex couples so long as the blessing was performed without any type of ritualisation and did not give the impression of the church’s approval of the relationship.

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Italian priest struck off for calling Francis an ‘anti-pope usurper’

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Priest in Tuscany compares Francis unfavourably with Pope Benedict in New Year’s Eve address shared online

An Italian priest has been struck off after calling Pope Francis an “anti-pope usurper” in his New Year’s Eve homily.

Father Ramon Guidetti’s speech to the congregation at St Ranieri church in Guasticce, a hamlet in the Tuscan province of Livorno, was a tribute marking the first anniversary of the death of Francis’s predecessor Benedict XVI.

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‘Sorrow and silence’ in Bethlehem as Christmas festivities are cancelled

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The streets are usually thronged with tourists and pilgrims but this year the town is mourning the dead of the Gaza war

In the days leading up to Christmas, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said that one particular Bible verse kept running through his mind.

“When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem she gave birth to the Lord in a manger because ‘there was no room for them’,” he told about 5,000 people during the Christmas Eve midnight mass service in the Palestinian town where Christians believe Jesus was born.

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Indian Christians find comfort and joy in church communities across Britain

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And churches used to dwindling congregations are delighted to see numbers boosted by worshippers of all ages

Father Happy Jacob has a reason to be cheerful. When he started St Thomas’s Indian Orthodox Church in Liverpool in 2002, his congregation numbered about 60 families, and stayed at that level for almost two decades.

Then, a few years ago, things began to change. “We have seen a massive increase in families coming to the church,” says Jacob, 48. At his last count, there were 110 families, with worshippers including NHS workers, international students and about 100 school-age children.

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House speaker’s Christian nationalist ties spark first amendment fears

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Mike Johnson’s links to key leaders prompts alarm he might try to erode elements of constitution on separation of church and state

Links between the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and key Christian nationalist leaders have sparked fears the devout Louisiana congressman might seek to erode elements of the first amendment, which protects key US civil liberties including freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.

Long before th eevangelical conservative Johnson became speaker, he had forged close ties with Christian nationalists like David Barton, whose writings claiming the country’s founders intended to create a Christian nation have been widely debunked by religion scholars.

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Cardinal condemns ‘cold–blooded’ killing of two women in Gaza church

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Vincent Nichols says shooting of mother and daughter did nothing to further Israel’s right to defend itself

The shooting of a mother and daughter allegedly by an Israeli military sniper in a church compound in Gaza City was a “cold–blooded killing”, the most senior Catholic cleric in England has said.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, said the shooting did “nothing to further Israel’s right to defend itself”.

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US archbishop secretly backed bid to free priest convicted of raping child

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‘I join you in the prayer to guide those regarding your appeal,’ Gregory Aymond of New Orleans wrote to priest given life sentence

As he reached the end of his 41-year life, Kevin Portier had endured child rape at the hands of a southern Louisiana Catholic priest for whom he had served as an altar boy; a highly publicized trial that sent the clergyman to prison for the rest of his days; and the trauma associated with those experiences.

But one of Portier’s harshest ordeals came within his final two years alive. Representatives of the church that he had been raised to believe in approached him at his home, at his job and at a relative’s funeral to ask him to lend his support to efforts to secure an early release for his rapist, Robert Melancon.

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Pope Francis reveals he will not be buried in Vatican

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Pontiff tells Mexican broadcaster he will break with tradition and simplify papal funeral

Pope Francis has said he has “already prepared” his tomb in a Rome basilica in a further sign of the pontiff’s quest to break from longstanding Vatican tradition.

Francis, who turns 87 on 17 December, told the Mexican broadcaster N+ that he would be laid to rest in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in the Esquilino neighbourhood in Rome, where he goes to pray before and after trips overseas.

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‘The devil was in that building’: New Orleans church orphanages’ dark secrets

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Survivors of institutions run by Catholic diocese recall litany of sexual abuse as bankruptcy process keeps documents hidden

This is the final installment of a three-part series exploring how the archdiocese of New Orleans’s bankruptcy stands apart from other cases of its kind. The first installment ran on Wednesday 29 November 2023, and the second installment ran on Friday 1 December.

Call her Sheila.

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Pope revokes privileges of conservative US cardinal critical of church’s reform

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In second radical action in a month, pontiff hits back at retired prelate Raymond Burke, one of his most vocal critics

Pope Francis has decided to punish one of his highest-ranking critics, Cardinal Raymond Burke, by revoking his right to a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary in the second such radical action against a conservative American prelate this month, according to two people briefed on the measures.

Francis told a meeting of the heads of Vatican offices last week that he was moving against Burke because he was a source of “disunity” in the church, said one of the participants at the 20 November meeting. The participant spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal the contents of the encounter.

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