News - October 2020 RSS Feed

For Our Lady of Loretto Parish, the closure of its church to public Masses from March to October had a silver lining.

In the wake of the high-profile deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd that prompted national outrage and discussion about Black lives and racial justice, local Catholics asked themselves “Where’s Christ’s body when his members are being killed or facing injustice -- where is the church in this?” Stephen Staten said. 

The pandemic of 2020 has been hard on every Catholic. Eucharistic fasting for this length of time may remind us what 20th century heroes of the faith in underground churches endured, and what 21st century confessors in China and elsewhere endure today; and that is no bad thing.

My grandma’s favorite question is one we now discourage her from uttering. “Can you come in?”  The impulse to swing open her door and her arms, honed over nine decades and stitched into her Irish-Catholic DNA, is not easily thwarted. Yet we have attempted to do so this year.

Churches were asked to chime their bells at 3 p.m. in an act of mourning for three people who were killed in Nice's Notre Dame Basilica while preparing for morning Mass.

An upcoming virtual conference hopes to show that even if people cannot travel and mingle, they can still join together for a weekend of faith and education.

Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of five men and four women, including four 20th-century martyrs killed in Brazil, Turkey and Italy.

Catholic leaders in northern El Salvador are speaking against the effects of increased government military presence along the country's northern border with Honduras because of how it is affecting the free movement and livelihood of rural communities.

"Jesus always prays with his people; he always prays with us. Always. We never pray alone; we always pray with Jesus," he said.

When it comes to matters of racial justice, there's not a need for the church to say more, but a need for the church to do more, retired Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville, Illinois, told pilgrims gathered at the Catholic Enrichment Center in Louisville.

The proof of being on a path of conversion and holiness always consists in loving one's neighbor, Pope Francis said.

During the ongoing pandemic, the commitment of health care workers to treat COVID-19 patients even at risk to their own health and lives is an illustration of Judeo-Christian values still at work in the larger society, said Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco.

Jesuit Father Robert Walsh died Oct. 24, 2020 at his order’s Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.

Pope Francis announced he will create 13 new cardinals Nov. 28, including Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Washington.

When Pope Francis said gay people have a right to be in a family and that gay couples needed some form of civil law to protect their rights, he was not saying that gay couples should have a right to adopt children.

This statement of Pope Francis has been described in major news outlets as a bombshell, firestorm, shock, and disaster. Both secular and ecclesiastical critics accuse the pope of diluting church doctrine and contradicting church teaching about same sex unions.

While there is no doubt that Pope Francis said civil laws should protect the rights of gay couples, some mystery shrouds the context in which he said it and the way it is used in a new film.

Les McDonald, a longtime presence in Bay Area real estate and as a part of the property management arm of the Archdiocese of San Francisco died Oct. 17, 2020. He was 80 years old.

The Vatican and the Chinese government will extend an agreement signed in 2018 regarding the appointment of bishops.

Pope Francis said Wednesday that Christians should pray from the heart and not “like parrots.”