International

WORLD POPULATION OF CATHOLICS INCREASE BY 14 MILLION

Every year, just in time for World Mission Day, Agenzia Fides releases a report which takes stock of the world’s population of Catholics. This year, in celebration of their 92nd WMD, they announced that the Church had grown by 14 million faithful since 2015. The numbers are taken from the “Church’s Book of Statistics,” which examines members of the church, church structures, […]

WOMEN’S VOICE NEEDED TO FIGHT CLERICALISM, ‘MACHO’ CULTURE, CARDINAL OUELLET SAYS

The church needs to further integrate women into ecclesial life to confront the problems of clericalism and an exaggerated sense of masculinity, a Vatican official told the Synod of Bishops. In his address to the Synod members on Oct. 18, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, said he agreed with the working […]

CONSTANTINOPLE REFUSES TO SEVER COMMUNION WITH RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

Constantinople remains in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church despite the severance of Eucharistic communion between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Constantinople Patriarchate, the exarchate of Russian parishes in Western Europe said. “Dear brothers and sisters, we inform you that our bishops and exarchs who are in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate remain […]

NETHERLANDS: RELIGIOUS BELONGING AND ATTENDANCE STILL DECREASING. ONLY 6% OF THOSE WHO SAY THEY ARE CATHOLIC ATTEND SUNDAY MASS

51% of Dutch people over 15 years of age do not belong to any Church or to any religion whatsoever. Just released by the National Statistics Bureau (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) as part of a survey of “social cohesion and welfare,” this figure shows a further decrease in the religious belonging of the Dutch: […]

SYNOD GROUPS ON SEXUALITY: CHURCH WELCOMES ALL, CALLS ALL TO CONVERSION

No one is excluded from the love of God or from being welcomed into the Catholic Church, but God’s love and the church’s welcome also come with a call to conversion, said the English- language groups at the Synod of Bishops. Young people need to know “the church’s beautiful, yet challenging, vision, teaching and anthropology […]

The Orthodox Church is on the brink of a new Great Schism

For centuries, the archbishops of Constantinople could credibly claim to be the “Ecumenical Patriarch”. Their see was the “New Rome”, centre of the oikoumenç, the “inhabited world”. Today, their successor, Patriarch Bartholomew, looks beleaguered. The guards around his residence in the Phanar quarter of Istanbul reveal his threatened position in an increasingly Islamified Turkey. But […]

Pope: Eastern-rite priests’ families offer unique example

The families of Eastern-rite Catholic priests give an important witness to what is healthy and wonderful about family life, Pope Francis said. Speaking to laypeople, clergy and religious of the Slovak Catholic Church – a Byzantine-rite Church that has maintained its tradition of ordaining both celibate and married men – the Pope said, “the families […]

Pope Francis calls for a youth synod ‘anointed by hope’

Pope Francis began the Synod on young people Oct. 3 with a homily call-ing for the Holy Spirit to renew hope and dynamism in the Church. Hope can “broaden our horizons, expand our hearts and transform those frames of mind that today paralyze, separate and alienate us from young people,” said Pope Francis. The […]

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