Tag Archives: Vatican

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis has dismissed rumors he plans to resign anytime soon and that he hopes to visit Moscow and Kyiv after traveling to Canada later this month. Francis also told Reuters in an interview published Monday that the idea “never entered my mind” to announce a planned retirement at the end of the summer, though he …

The Associated Press reports: Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose $44 billion bid to buy Twitter remains in limbo, used the social media platform to announce he had met with Pope Francis. “Honored to meet @Pontifex yesterday,” Musk tweeted of the Friday afternoon audience, alongside a photo showing Musk, Francis and four of Musk’s teenage children. Francis frequently meets with high-profile …

NPR reports: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights. Pelosi attended the morning Mass marking the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, during which Francis bestowed the woolen pallium stole on newly consecrated archbishops. …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis added fuel to rumors about the future of his pontificate by announcing he would visit the central Italian city of L’Aquila in August for a feast initiated by Pope Celestine V, one of the few pontiffs who resigned before Pope Benedict XVI stepped down in 2013. Italian and Catholic media have been rife with …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis gave a new mandate to his sex abuse advisory commission Friday, telling its members to work with bishops around the world to establish special welcome centers for victims and to audit the church’s progress on fighting abuse from its new perch within the Vatican. Francis warned that without more accountability from the church, the …

The National Catholic Register reports: Cardinal George Pell has called on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to publicly reprimand two of Europe’s most senior bishops for what he said was their “wholesale and explicit rejection” of the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics. In a statement released March 15, Cardinal Pell asked the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation to …

Reuters reports: A Catholic bishop accused of sexually abusing young men studying to be priests was found guilty by a court in northern Argentina on Friday, capping over a week of often graphic testimony. Gustavo Zanchetta, the former bishop of Oran in Argentina’s northern province of Salta, was convicted of sexually abusing two former seminarians, which prosecutors said in a …

ABC News reports: Pope Francis visited the Russian Embassy on Friday to personally “express his concern about the war” in Ukraine, in an extraordinary, hands-on papal gesture that has no recent precedent. Usually, popes receive ambassadors and heads of state in the Vatican, and diplomatic protocol would have called for the Vatican foreign minister to summon the Russian ambassador. For …

The Associated Press reports: Retired Pope Benedict XVI asked forgiveness Tuesday for any “grievous faults” in his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, but admitted to no personal or specific wrongdoing after an independent report criticized his actions in four cases while he was archbishop of Munich, Germany. “I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis denounced fake news about COVID-19 and vaccines Friday, blasting the “distortion of reality based on fear” but also urging that people who believe such lies are helped to understand true scientific facts. Francis met with Catholic journalists who have formed a fact-checking network to try to combat misinformation about the pandemic. Francis has frequently …

Reuters reports: Pope Francis said on Wednesday that parents of gay children should not condemn them but offer them support. He spoke in unscripted comments at his weekly audience in reference to difficulties that parents can face in raising offspring. Those issues included “parents who see different sexual orientations in their children and how to handle this, how to accompany …

Religion News Service reports: The Vatican has tightened its COVID-19 regulations by requiring the use of FFP2 masks (similar to N95 masks) inside and making vaccinations and booster shots mandatory for employees and visitors wishing to enter the Vatican Museums and gardens. In an attached document, the Vatican also issued fines for people who do not respect the new regulations. …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Pope Francis on Monday warned that antivaccine misinformation was undermining recovery from the pandemic and denounced a “cancel culture” intolerant of traditional values that he said was impeding cooperation among the world’s societies. The pope’s remarks came in his annual speech to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, in which he typically highlights urgent international …

Agence France-Presse reports: Pope Francis risked the ire of the world’s childless dog and cat owners by suggesting people who substitute pets for children exhibit “a certain selfishness”. Speaking on parenthood during a general audience at the Vatican, the pontiff lamented that pets “sometimes take the place of children” in society. “Today … we see a form of selfishness. We …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis canceled his New Year’s Eve tradition of visiting the life-sized Nativity scene set up in St. Peter’s Square to discourage large crowds from forming. Meanwhile, major Italian cities scrapped their traditional Dec. 31 open-air concerts as Italy battles a record-setting surge in coronavirus cases. The Vatican has largely followed Italy’s lead in imposing restrictions …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis prayed Saturday for an end to the coronavirus pandemic, using his Christmas Day address to urge health care for all, vaccines for the poor and for dialogue to prevail in resolving the world’s conflicts. Amid a record-setting rise in COVID-19 cases in Italy this week, only a few thousand people flocked to a rain-soaked …

The Associated Press reports: A Vatican official has apologized to a leading Catholic LGBTQ advocacy group for having yanked a reference to it from the Vatican website, saying he realized the move caused pain and that the Catholic Church does indeed want to include gays and hear from them. The Vatican’s General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops, which is …

The Associated Press reports: President Joe Biden received Communion at St. Patrick’s Church during Vigil Mass, a day after saying Pope Francis told him he should continue to partake in the sacrament, despite the opposition of some conservatives in the U.S. upset with his position on abortion. Biden and his wife, Jill, visited the church that is the main place …

The New York Times reports: President Biden told reporters on Friday that Pope Francis had called him a “good Catholic” and said he should keep receiving communion, an unexpected development that appeared to put a papal finger on the scale in a debate raging in the United States’ Roman Catholic Church over whether the president and other Catholic politicians who …

The Guardian reports: Pope Francis has urged world leaders to take “radical decisions” at next week’s global environmental summit in a special message recorded for BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. Leaders attending the Cop26 conference in Glasgow must offer “concrete hope to future generations”, the pontiff said. Francis is not attending the summit, despite earlier suggestions that he …