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Bangladesh’s long road to lay empowerment

The 300-bed Divine Mercy Hospital near Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka will become the biggest Christian-run healthcare facility in the Muslim-majority nation when it opens in November this year. The hospital, being built at a cost of  3 billion taka (US$ 28 million), is the signature project of Christian Cooperative Credit Union Limited (CCCUL) and has about 50,000 Catholic […]

Lefebvre priests’ push spreads Malaysian Church confusion

In a busy commercial hub outside Kuala Lumpur, above a row of shops, sits the chapel where Elizabeth attends Sunday Mass. But the 27-year-old Catholic, who would identify only as Elizabeth, is discreet about her newfound love for the traditional Latin language Mass. She is not alone. Some 120 Catholics gather regularly for Sunday Mass […]

Christians flee fresh violence in Myanmar’s Kachin state

More than a thousand people, most of them Catholics and Baptists, have fled their village in Myanmar’s northern Kachin state after fresh fighting erupted between the military forces and ethnic Kachin rebels.Those who fled belong to some 160 families from Nan San Yang village, located barely 20 km from Laiza town, which is the headquarters of […]

Christian widow raped and killed in Lahore for refusing to convert

Shazia Imran, a Christian woman, was kidnapped, raped and killed by four Muslim men because she refused to convert to Islam and marry a man who had set his eyes on her. Mani Gujjar is the main suspect in the death of the 40-year-old Christian widow. After failing to get her to do what he […]

Living on a prayer? How attending worship can improve your physical and mental health

People who attend worship services regularly tend to have more close friendships, which can in turn lead to better health outcomes. Most health care professionals know they can’t fully assess patients’ health without looking at social determinants, the nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes. Income, housing, quality of schools, access to fresh produce and other […]

Women Process With Monstrance, Sparking Scandal

Female pastoral workers in a German parish are triggering outrage among faithful Catholics after the women processed with the Blessed Sacrament on the feast of Corpus Christi. Marita Franzen and Sandra Ostermann, who hold the position of gemeindereferentin  (pastoral officer) in the Catholic parish of St. Joseph and St. Medardus in Lüdenscheid, were photographed carrying the sacred monstrance […]

Pope charges new doctrine czar to spurn ‘immoral methods’ in defense of the faith

In what’s likely to be seen as a classic example of the adage that “personnel is policy,” Pope Francis on Saturday tapped an Argentine archbishop widely seen as a close ally and ghostwriter for several major papal documents as the Vatican’s new doctrinal czar. In a July 1 statement, the Vatican said the mandate of […]

Pope says imitating Jesus is more than ‘rigid observance’ of rules

Honoring Saints Peter and Paul, the patrons of Rome, on their liturgical feast day, Pope Francis said understanding and imitating Jesus is not a matter of following doctrinal formulas or the “rigid observance” of rules and norms. Rather, it means letting go of preconceived convictions and daily being transformed by his love in order to […]