Japan’s religious landscape is undergoing a transformative shift, which is all the more evident by looking at the growing number of mosques that have emerged in the country over the past two decades. The change can be attributed to a lesser degree to increasing...
In 2016, when President Xi Jinping delivered a speech calling for the “Sinicization of religion” in a nation of one billion, he was espousing a century-old impulse among his people while also inadvertently underscoring a persistent paradox that Chinese Communists...
A new survey from the U.S. Bishops’ Conference and George town University shows that the number of permanent deacons in active ministry in the U.S. last year is the lowest since 2011, which “is [a trend] in keeping with the slow decline of the diaconate over the past...
A new television channel has been launched in Iraq as an initiative to save Syriac, a language spoken for more than 2,000 years which was once the most common in Christian liturgies. An ancient dialect of Aramaic, Syriac has traditionally been the language spoken by...
Pope Francis’s medical team reported June 9 morning that two days after undergoing surgery for an abdominal hernia, the pontiff is continually improving and spent the morning reading following a lengthy rest the day before. A June 9 statement from the Vatican said...
