News - September 2017 RSS Feed

VATICAN CITY – Young people should love, believe and follow their dreams, never despairing because Jesus is always with them, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY – Several dozen priests, scholars and writers have published what they described as a “filial correction” of some of Pope Francis’ teachings about marriage – particularly about access to the sacraments for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has endorsed an approach of “zero tolerance” toward all members of the church guilty of sexually abusing minors or vulnerable adults.

WASHINGTON – Every person “must do something,” whether big or small, to address racism in the United States, Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville, Illinois, told an audience at The Catholic University of America.

CHICAGO – The head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization said Catholics “need a profound renewal of our catechesis.”

OKLAHOMA CITY – If the martyrdom of Blessed Stanley Francis Rother “fills us with sadness,” it also “gives us the joy of admiring the kindness, generosity and courage of a great man of faith,” Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, said Sept. 23 in Oklahoma City.

NEW ORLEANS – New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan suggested to more than 400 priests of the state of Louisiana that humbly and openly sharing the “wounds” and shortcomings of the church might bring those who are alienated back to the practice of the faith.

VATICAN CITY – Celebrating the feast of St. Matthew, the anniversary of the day when as a 17-year-old he said he was overwhelmed by God’s mercy, Pope Francis said it was interesting how many Catholics today seem to be scandalized when God shows mercy to someone.

VATICAN CITY – Young people should love, believe and follow their dreams, never despairing because Jesus is always with them, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has endorsed an approach of “zero tolerance” toward all members of the church guilty of sexually abusing minors or vulnerable adults.

Pope Francis and bishops around the world are beginning a global campaign to support immigrants and refugees. Sept. 27 was the official launch in Rome by Pope Francis of the two-year campaign, called ‘”Share the Journey.”

Longtime San Francisco treasurer Mary Irene Callanan died Sept. 11 at the age of 86. Mary was a lifetime parishioner of St. Paul’s in San Francisco and graduated from St. Paul School going on to the University of San Francisco for an undergraduate degree and MBA.

The Sept. 14 article by Kurt Jensen (“Catholic judicial nominee grilled by senators on her religious views”) is a hatchet job against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the best California senator ever – certainly the best representative in Washington that San Francisco ever had.

I read the letter to the editor by P. Roscelli from Sept. 14 (“Hate speech and the First Amendment”) and was confused. What was the desired response by the Catholic Church that the writer wanted?

There are two subjects U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, deems off-limits while analyzing what he calls “America’s coming-of-age crisis”: sex and politics.

How do we know what God’s will for us is? Do we have to guess what God wants – what we should do or choose? What if we guess badly?

Hurricane Harvey stranded Father David Bergeron in his pick-up the night it ripped through Houston. The 38-year-old priest had been visiting his brother and had to pull over on an overpass three miles from his home in the flood-ravaged southeast side.

During the Long Lent of 2002, Sister Betsy Conway, who lived in the Bostonian epicenter of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, spoke for many self-identified progressive Catholics when she told syndicated columnist Michael Kelly, “This is our church, all of us, and we need to take it back.”

One of the greatest heroes of the social justice wing of the church is, quite rightly, the 17th-century “slave of the slaves,” St. Peter Claver. Born in Barcelona, Claver joined the Society of Jesus and was known, even as a young man, as a person of deep intelligence and piety.

An article published in 2012 in The Atlantic described the sexual practices of the Aka and Ngandu people who live in the tropical forests of central Africa.