King and Queen Camilla to join pontiff in late October amid jubilee year celebrations, says Buckingham Palace
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will make a state visit to meet Pope Leo XIV for the first time at the Vatican next month, Buckingham Palace has said.
The trip in late October will come about six months after the royal couple visited Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, shortly before his death in April.
Continue reading...State and federal anti-discrimination laws on collision course as Sacred Heart Girls College in Oakleigh refuses to recognise Myka Sanders’ gender identity
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The Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (Macs) has refused to let a non-binary teacher use their preferred pronouns and title, in a case that has put state and federal anti-discrimination laws on a legal collision course.
Two years ago, non-binary teacher Myka Sanders – who uses they/them pronouns and Mx for their title – asked Sacred Heart Girls College in Oakleigh, Melbourne if their gender identity could be recognised at school.
Continue reading...Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 and built websites to spread Catholic message, to become first millennial saint
In a see-through safe carved into a wall behind the altar of a chapel in northern Rome lies a collection of relics of Carlo Acutis. These include a splinter from his wooden bed, a fragment of a jumper and a piece of the sheet used to cover him after his death. Locks of his hair are on display in other churches in the Italian capital and beyond.
Acutis, the London-born Italian who on Sunday will become the Catholic church’s first millennial saint, built websites to spread Catholic teaching, earning him the nickname “God’s Influencer” after his death, aged 15, from leukaemia.
Continue reading...Former Roman Catholic priest and two dominatrices were evidently recording sexual videos in the church in 2020
A judge in Louisiana has ordered the return of electronics belonging to an ex-Roman Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to obscenity for being caught having sex with two dominatrices atop a church altar while still belonging to the clergy in 2020.
However, the judge also told authorities to erase all data from the devices and storage media as a precaution against videos taken of the tryst from becoming public.
Continue reading...Lawsuit has most direct allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Aymond, who denies them, in court filing to date
A lawsuit newly filed against the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans and its top two officials alleges the city’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, personally covered up child sexual abuse by priests and deacons – and asks a judge to reject a guarantee on his future retirement benefits as punishment.
The archdiocese responded by saying the allegations brought by the plaintiff, Argent Institutional Trust Co, are baseless.
Continue reading...Pontiff presides over culmination of ‘Catholic Woodstock’ that drew young people from 146 countries
Pope Leo XIV presided over a mass in Rome for more than a million young people on Sunday, the culmination of a pilgrimage that has drawn Catholics from across the world.
“Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less,” the pope told the crowd.
Continue reading...Vatican invites 1,000 social media missionaries to digital jubilee conference
Mixing prayer and gospel with poetry, art and bodybuilding, the rising stars in the influencer world are not just those flaunting fashion and travel but also Roman Catholic priests spreading the word of God.
Pope Francis latched on to the trend and, just months before his death in April, made the mission of evangelising on social media a priority for the church.
Continue reading...Israel grants access after ‘stray’ tank round kills three people and wounds Catholic priest
Israel has granted two senior Christian leaders rare access to Gaza after an Israeli strike on the Palestinian territory’s only Roman Catholic church killed three people.
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Catholic Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, and his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Theophilos III, led a delegation on Friday to the Holy Family Church, whose shelling the day before triggered international condemnation.
Continue reading...Outcome could have major effects on whether the Catholic archdiocese settles its expensive, five-year-old case
As New Orleans’s bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese finalizes a plan to settle 633 clergy abuse claims filed against it, the church’s investors are arguing in US bankruptcy court that about half of those survivors could have their claims thrown out.
Church officials said on Wednesday they would not necessarily seek that, though the eligibility of claims will be determined by a court-appointed examiner. If the investors’ arguments prevail, it could have major effects on whether the US’s second-oldest Catholic archdiocese settles its expensive, five-year-old bankruptcy case – or if victims of abuse by its clergy will pursue their claims individually in civil court.
Continue reading...Excavation crews begin sealing off site in Tuam, Co Galway, before full-scale dig starts on 14 July
Preliminary work aimed at identifying the remains of nearly 800 infants is starting on the site in Tuam, Co Galway, as Ireland continues to wrestle with the traumatic legacy of its mother and baby homes scandal.
Catherine Corless, a local historian who first sounded the alarm about the dark past of the institution run by nuns from the Bon Secours order, uncovered the names of 796 infants who are believed to have been buried there between 1925 and 1961, some in a disused subterranean septic tank. There were no burial records.
Continue reading...Campaign pushes to change law that could lead to survivors living in UK being disqualified from means-tested benefits
Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes are being “retraumatised” by the prospect of losing benefits in the UK if they accept compensation from the Irish state, Westminster has been told.
The warning comes amid a campaign backed by representatives of almost every political party in the UK and figures including Steve Coogan, who starred in Philomena, a film about the mother and baby homes scandal.
Continue reading...Census finds just 56.7% in world’s biggest Catholic country follow Roman church as evangelical numbers rise
Home to the world’s largest Catholic population, Brazil has once again witnessed a decline in the faith’s following, according to new figures released by the country’s national statistics institute (IBGE).
Thirty years ago, Catholics made up 82.9% of Brazil’s population but now account for just over half, 56.7%, according to the 2022 census – whose results on religion were only released on Friday.
Continue reading...US state department says on website it may ‘actively review’ status of Americans who ‘serve as a foreign head of state’
Pope Leo XIV’s election as the first US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church elevated him to the rare, legally thorny, position of being an American citizen who now is also a foreign head of state.
Born in Chicago as Robert Prevost in 1955, the new pope for the past decade has held dual citizenship in the US and Peru, where he spent time as a missionary and bishop.
Continue reading...A potential agreement with survivors is in the works, but some parties are unhappy with settlement amount
The Catholic archbishop of New Orleans made a rare in-person appearance in federal bankruptcy court on Friday, days after announcing a potential agreement to settle claims with hundreds of clergy abuse survivors that has been met with pushback from some of the plaintiffs.
“I’m here because I’m concerned for the survivors,” Gregory Aymond said in an interview with WWL Louisiana away from the cameras after what is believed to have been his first appearance in person for an open court hearing in the five years since his archdiocese – one of the US’s oldest – joined roughly 40 Catholic institutions to file for bankruptcy protection amid the worldwide church’s long ongoing clergy molestation scandal.
Continue reading...A potential agreement with survivors is in the works, but some parties are unhappy with settlement amount
The Catholic archbishop of New Orleans made a rare in-person appearance in federal bankruptcy court on Friday, days after announcing a potential agreement to settle claims with hundreds of clergy abuse survivors that has been met with pushback from some of the plaintiffs.
“I’m here because I’m concerned for the survivors,” Gregory Aymond said in an interview with WWL Louisiana away from the cameras after what is believed to have been his first appearance in person for an open court hearing in the five years since his archdiocese – one of the US’s oldest – joined roughly 40 Catholic institutions to file for bankruptcy protection amid the worldwide church’s long ongoing clergy molestation scandal.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskyy and JD Vance among 150,000 present as Leo says he wants Catholic church to be ‘leaven of unity’
Pope Leo XIV said he wanted the Catholic church to be a “small leaven of unity” in a time of “too much discord and too many wounds”, during his inaugural papal mass attended by world leaders including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the US vice-president, JD Vance.
Calling for more love and unity, Leo said the church’s “true authority” was the charity of Christ. He said: “It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.”
Continue reading...New pontiff also urges a ceasefire and humanitarian aid in Gaza and welcomes truce between India and Pakistan
Pope Leo XIV has called for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine and pleaded for an end to global conflicts, which he likened to a “third world war in pieces”.
In his first Sunday address at the Vatican, the new pontiff urged an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid in Gaza and the release of all hostages. He also welcomed the truce between India and Pakistan and referenced the end of the second world war in 1945.
Continue reading...A fraught history of race and immigration connect the new pope with his homeland
Pope Leo XIV, who on Thursday was elected as the first-ever US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church, has a familial bloodline that reflects his homeland’s fraught relationship with race – and why the nation’s stature as a melting pot of origins has long endured, records unearthed by genealogists show.
The maternal grandfather of 69-year-old Robert Prevost, the newly minted pope, was evidently born abroad in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, according to birth records that professional genealogist Chris Smothers cited to ABC News in a recent report. When Leo’s grandfather, Joseph Martinez, obtained an 1887 marriage license to wed the future pope’s grandmother, Louise Baquié, he listed his birthplace as Haiti, which at the time was the same territory as Santo Domingo, Smothers noted.
Continue reading...Pope faced questions about his handling of clerical sexual abuse cases earlier in his career after a survivors group filed a complaint
Groups supporting clergy-molestation survivors say they are gravely concerned and insulted by the election of Pope Leo XIV after he overcame questions about his handling of clerical sexual abuse cases earlier in his career to become the Roman Catholic church’s first-ever US-born leader.
Before Robert Prevost’s ascent to the papacy at age 69, he was leading a chapter of the Augustinian religious order in his home town of Chicago when allegations surfaced that a priest and Catholic high school principal under his jurisdiction had molested at least one student as well as kept child-abuse imagery.
Continue reading...Leo XIV is a fan of Tim Tams but not Vegemite, one church leader says, and is ‘humble’ and ‘gentle’
Australian Catholics and politicians have embraced the appointment of the new pope, Leo XIV, with many hoping he will continue his predecessor’s emphasis on peace and social justice.
Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, offered Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost – now known as Pope Leo XIV – heartfelt congratulations on behalf of the Roman Catholic church in Australia.
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