Pope Francis apologized on Wednesday for slapping a woman who had grabbed him as he greeted a crowd of devotees, shortly before he delivered a speech denouncing ”every form of violence against women.
A US cardinal gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to powerful Catholic clerics including two popes while facing accusations of sexual harassment, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
Pope Francis urged the world to let the light of Christmas pierce the “darkness in human hearts” that leads to religious persecution, social injustice, armed conflicts and fear of migrants.
In a conciliatory gesture 37 years after the Falklands War, military bishops from Great Britain and Argentina exchanged images of the Virgin Mary on Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square, blessed by Pope Francis.
A Brazilian diplomat said last week that the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro doesn’t fear the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon taking place this month at the Vatican, but that the Catholic bishops “involuntarily reinforce the campaign of the European lobbies, who are very afraid of the competition of Brazilian agriculture.”
The Vatican's latest leaks scandal claimed its first victim on Monday, as Pope Francis' chief bodyguard resigned over the leak of a Vatican police flyer identifying five employees who were suspended as part of a financial investigation.
The pastor's voice bellows through an old converted cinema in a rundown Buenos Aires barrio and hundreds of hands reach out in prayer. Though not a typical place of worship, Evangelical churches like this one are sprouting up all over Pope Francis' former archdiocese, as once staunchly Catholic Argentina battles an economic crisis that has plunged more than one-third of the nation into poverty.
Pope Francis opened a synod Sunday to champion the Amazon's poverty-stricken and isolated indigenous communities by condemning the destructive interests he blamed for the fires that devastated the region.
A shortage of Catholic priests in the Amazon is eroding the church's influence in the remote region, bishops in Brazil and Peru warn, ahead of a Vatican synod dedicated to the rainforest. Wilmar Santin, one of the scores of Brazilian bishops set to attend the Oct 6-27 gathering, says the church is ceding ground to more nimble Evangelical rivals and needs to lift its game.
An image of Argentina's saint patron, the Virgin of Lujan, which was carried to the Falklands during the 1982 conflict, and remained unaccounted for during years, will be returned by the United Kingdom. In retribution, the Argentine military bishop will hand a replica of the image to the head of British military chaplains in a ceremony to take place next month in the Vatican with Pope Francis blessing the images.