With the Christmas season officially over, this week the Vatican got back to business. Pope Francis had a full slate of meetings this week with a wide variety of guests: the priests from the Argentine College, the nuncios to Zimbabwe, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the papal delegate to Palestine and Jerusalem and a ...read more

History On November 16, 1989 on the campus of the Central American University in San Salvador, six Jesuit priests were pulled from their beds in the middle of the night and executed. The military officers who carried out the killing went unpunished for decades. Five of six Jesuits were Spanish citizens. In 2008 the Spanish ...read more

Call it an early Christmas Gift, call it a message about the kind of mercy Pope Francis wants us to show to the world. Whatever you want to call, the end result is the same: Mother Teresa is going to be canonized. A second miracle attributed to her intercession has been approved by Pope Francis. The ...read more

This year marks 50 years since the end of the Second Vatican Council and the promulgation of several key documents that shaped the church. There is one document, not part of the official canon of Vatican II documents, that shaped the church just as much yet has been almost forgotten. It is called the Catacombs ...read more

We have all learned by now that Pope Francis will release interviews to whomever he choses, whenever he feels the moment is right. The key is asking with simplicity and sincerity. So it should come as no surprise that he released yet another interview. This time the journalist was a former homeless person and the ...read more

As discussion inside the Synod hall turned to issues that brought out personal stories and anecdotes from many participants, there was, according to the Vatican press office, an in-depth discussion around around divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and various calls for a better approach to marriage preparation. At least one member proposed that there should ...read more

Two Years with Pope Francis March 13 marks the second anniversary of the day the College of Cardinals surprised the world by electing, as pope, a Jesuit from Argentina. Two years on, what effect has this Argentine pope had on the wider church? The 78-year-old pontiff came to his new job with an acute awareness ...read more

One of the big stories this week happened in New York: Cardinal Edward Egan, the retired archbishop of New York, died suddenly at the age of 82. Cardinal Egan collapsed at his residence and was rushed to NYU Langone Medical Centre. There he was prounced dead by doctors at 2:20pm. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the current ...read more

Pope Francis has been on retreat this week, along with the members of the Roman Curia. Continuing a practice the pope started during his first year on the chair of St. Peter, he and his collaborators are spending the week at a retreat house in the Roman hillside town of Arriccia. Carmelite Father Bruno Secondin ...read more

Pope Francis told Ukrainian bishops to avoid politicizing their role in the face of the ongoing conflict in the country. He made the comment in a text handed out to the bishops during their Ad Limina visit this week. Ukranian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk told reporters earlier in the week his goal, and the goal ...read more