President-elect of the US says his belief in equality is rooted in his ‘cultural Catholicism’
He carries a rosary in his pocket, one that belonged to his dead son, Beau. On election day last Tuesday, he went to mass, as he does every Sunday.
In his victory speech on Saturday night, he quoted from Ecclesiastes: “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
Continue reading...Britain risks isolation as the president-elect prioritises relations with the EU. The government must understand the signs of the new times
The Irish question has played havoc with the best-laid plans of hardline Brexiters. Since 2016, successive Conservative governments have struggled to square the circle of keeping the United Kingdom intact, while avoiding the reimposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland. The border issue has been the achilles heel of Brexit, the thorn in the side of true believers in a “clean break” with the EU. So the prospect of an Irish-American politician on his way to the White House, just as Boris Johnson attempts to finagle his way round the problem, is an 11th-hour plot twist to savour.
Joe Biden’s views on Brexit are well known. The president-elect judges it to be a damaging act of self-isolation; strategically unwise for Britain and unhelpful to American interests in Europe. But it is the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU on Ireland that concerns Mr Biden most. This autumn, he was forthright on the subject of the government’s controversial internal market bill, which was again debated on Monday in the House of Lords. The proposed legislation effectively reneges on a legally binding protocol signed with the EU, which would impose customs checks on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland. In doing so, it summons up the spectre of a hard border on the island of Ireland, undermining the Good Friday agreement. Mr Biden is adamant that the GFA must not “become a casualty of Brexit”. He is expected to convey that message, in forceful terms, when his first telephone conversation with Mr Johnson eventually takes place.
Continue reading...Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people’s everyday lives
For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.
Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to Łódź, Poznań to Wrocław, Gdańsk to Kraków.
Continue reading...About 100,00o people take to the streets of Warsaw to oppose tightened abortion law
About one hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Friday, in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) since it assumed office in 2015.
Protests have been held across the country since Poland’s constitutional tribunal declared earlier this month that abortions in instances where a foetus is diagnosed with a serious and irreversible birth defect were unconstitutional. Such procedures constitute about 96% of legal abortions in Poland, which already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
Continue reading...Pontiff’s endorsement likely to further enrage his conservative opponents in Catholic church
Pope Francis has given his most explicit support to same-sex civil unions in a move that is likely to further enrage his conservative opponents in the Catholic church.
His comments came in an interview in a documentary film, Francesco, which premiered at the Rome film festival on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Carlo Acutis helped spread Catholic teaching online before his death aged 15 in 2006
Pope Francis said the beatification of an Italian computer whiz-kid was a sign to young people that “true happiness comes from putting God first”.
Carlo Acutis, who is on a path to sainthood after being beatified in the Umbrian town of Assisi, helped spread Roman Catholic teaching online before his death from leukaemia aged 15 in 2006. He is the youngest contemporary person to be beatified.
Continue reading...Mexico’s president says the Vatican should apologise for ‘reprehensible atrocities’ in colonisation 500 years ago
Mexico’s president has written to Pope Francis to ask for an apology for the Catholic church’s role in the oppression of indigenous people in the Spanish conquest 500 years ago.
The request was made in a two-page letter that also asked the Vatican to temporarily return several ancient indigenous manuscripts held in its library, ahead of next year’s 500-year anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Continue reading...The cardinal is travelling for official Vatican government business, which means he does not need an exemption
Cardinal George Pell did not need to apply for a travel exemption to leave Australia because he is travelling to Rome for official Vatican government business.
The news that Pell was flying from Sydney to Rome on Tuesday generated criticism online with people questioning why the Australian government – which has banned its citizens from leaving the country as a Covid-19 precaution – granted him an exemption.
Continue reading...Former Labour minister Ruth Kelly is among the women who will oversee Vatican finances and address its cashflow problems
Pope Francis has appointed six women to oversee the Vatican’s finances including Ruth Kelly, the former Labour minister, in the most senior roles ever given to women within the Catholic church’s leadership.
The appointments mark the most significant step by Francis to fulfil his promise of placing women in top positions. Until now, the 15-member Council for the Economy was all male. By statute, the council must include eight bishops – who are always men – and seven laypeople.
Continue reading...Pontiff says his ‘thoughts go to Istanbul’ after decision to convert Byzantine-era monument
Pope Francis has said he was “very distressed” over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.
“My thoughts go to Istanbul. I’m thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed,” the pontiff said in the Vatican’s first reaction to a decision that has drawn international criticism.
Continue reading...I wonder what happened in my local church, behind locked doors, for all these months
Football, pubs and churches are all now available to us again. While I love all three, they also, respectively, cause me stress, temptation and guilt. I did not go to mass at the weekend because, as with pubs, I thought it might be a bit of a melee. I imagined feisty parishioners clamouring at the door being spoken to severely by sunglassed, earpieced bouncers. No, I left it until Tuesday to allow calm to prevail. My church’s website advised me places were limited to 48. Pre-booking online was advised but the IT for that was still in development, so I decided to take my chances for the 11.30 kick-off.
I get my fruit and veg from a stall opposite the church. I always chat to the Brentford fan who works there – an enormous, and enormously nice man. Brentford were playing that evening – a match of great importance to supporters of my team, West Brom, who are rivals for promotion. My man was nowhere to be seen.
“He never works matchdays,” his mate said. “Too nervous.”
I laughed.
“I’m serious,” he said.
I told him to pass on a message that I was on my way to church to pray that Brentford lost.
There was no queue outside the church. A masked usher led me in, to the free-standing, no-touch hand-rub dispenser. Where once I would splash myself with holy water, I waved my hands in front of the machine, but gel came there none. Someone suggested I tried kneeling, but before I did so a splurge emerged. Rubbing my hands, partly in anticipation, I was led to my pew. It felt great to be back.
‘They call you and tell you the place and the date’ – but there are risks, with about 20 praying elderly women busted in one police raid
The invitations arrive via text message or social media. “They ask you for a kind of password to let you in,” said Jesús Preciado, whose father has attended the secretive gatherings in the Mexican state of Jalisco.
Diego Martínez, whose mother has attended the backstairs events, said they were off-limits to anyone not in the know. “It’s invitation-only,” he said. “They call you and tell you the place and the date.”
Continue reading...12 June 1987: The meeting of John Paul II and the leader of Solidarity, Lech Walesa, is a turning point for the post-communist future of the country
The Pope came to Poland’s Baltic coast last night, and confirmed what he called “the important reality of the term ‘solidarity’ and its eternal significance.”
Speaking once again to a rapt audience of a million or more, each one hanging on his every word, he declared: “The word ‘solidarity’ was uttered right here, in a new way and in a new context. And the world cannot forget it.”
Continue reading...There are now nearly 300 sexual abuse lawsuits against more than 20 priests on the deeply religious island in the western Pacific
Roosters crow in the distance as Walter Denton gestures toward a white one-storey concrete building behind a church in Agat, a village in southern Guam.
“You know, just standing here, right behind you, that is where I was raped,” says Denton, 56.
Continue reading...Polish archbishop calls for Vatican to ‘launch proceedings’ after release of child abuse documentary Hide and Seek
A Polish documentary on child abuse by Catholic clerics has put a damper on centenary celebrations of the late Pope John Paul II’s birth.
After the film Hide and Seek was seen by almost 80,000 people on YouTube, Polish archbishop Wojciech Polak called on the Vatican to “launch proceedings” into the cases in question.
Continue reading...Comments in authorised biography also associate gay marriage with the Antichrist
The former pope Benedict XVI has accused opponents of wanting to silence him, while associating gay marriage with the Antichrist and attacking humanist ideologies in an authorised biography published in Germany.
The 93-year-old, whose original name is Joseph Ratzinger, said in Benedict XVI – A Life he had fallen victim to a “malignant distortion of reality” in reactions to his interventions in theological debates.
Continue reading...News Corp says acquitted cardinal faces new claims over alleged incident in the 1970s when he was a priest in Ballarat
Cardinal George Pell is being investigated by police over a new allegation of child sexual abuse, according to News Corp reports.
Pell was released from jail last Tuesday after the high court acquitted him on five historical child sexual abuse charges. Pell, 78, spent more than 400 days in jail after being convicted by a jury in December 2018. The high court acquitted Pell after finding the jury should have held a reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
Continue reading...Cardinal writes in the Australian that ‘God-fearers’ are better able to deal with evil and suffering than atheists
Cardinal George Pell has used an Easter opinion piece to argue “God-fearers” are better able to deal with evil and suffering than atheists, pointing to his own experience of “13 months in jail for a crime I didn’t commit”.
Pell was released from prison on Tuesday after Australia’s high court quashed five convictions for child sexual abuse, over allegations he assaulted two choirboys at a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.
Continue reading...Witness J says he is glad the legal process is over, but the saga does not define him
The man at the heart of the failed case against Cardinal George Pell has issued a rallying cry to sexual abuse survivors.
He said he would hate to think that anyone might not report to the police because of his outcome.
Continue reading...Vatican praises Australian cardinal for having ‘waited for the truth to be ascertained’
Pope Francis has recalled the “persecution that Jesus suffered” and has prayed for those who suffer “unjust sentences” hours after Australia’s highest court acquitted cardinal George Pell of child sexual abuse.
The court in Canberra quashed convictions that Pell sexually assaulted two choirboys in the 1990s, allowing the 78-year-old former Vatican economy minister to walk free from jail, ending the most high-profile case of alleged historical sex abuse to rock the Roman Catholic church.
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