The Archbishop of West-minster and four British imams will meet with Pope Francis in a long planned trip that the Cardinal says will help build interfaith relations following the Westminster terrorist attack which left five dead and around 50 injured. They are due to have a papal audience on 5 April, exactly two weeks after Islamic extremist Khalid Masood, drove a car into pedestrians crossing Westminster Bridge before fatally stabbing a police officer outside the Houses of Parliament.

Pope Francis washed the feet of inmates at a prison in central Italy during a Holy Thursday liturgy, an annual ritual which he has used as a symbol of papal humility and his mission to the marginalised. On 13 April, Francis  travelled  to a detention centre in Paliano, 40 miles south of Rome, where he  celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, a liturgy where the priest emulates the moment Jesus washed the feet of His disciples. The prison in Paliano, in the province of Frosinone, is housed in a fortress style building in what is understood to have also been used by some of Francis predecessors as a prison during the 19th century papal states. This is not the first time the Pope has celebrated the Last Supper Mass in a prison. Soon after his election, Francis travelled to Rome’s Casal del Marmo youth detention centre where he made history by washing the feet of both women and Muslim inmates, a moment that set the tone for a papacy that would be focussed on the “peripheries.”

Cardinal Walter Kasper has told German media he believes Pope Francis favours ordaining married men of proven virtue (known by the Latin term, viri probati), but is also sure the Pope wants to leave the decision up to individual bishops’ conferences.

“The (vocation) situation differs so widely in different parts of the world that a uniform worldwide solution is not possible,” the cardinal said on April 6th in a long interview with the German Church’s Internet portal katholisch.de.

The occasion was the 60th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. “Each bishops’ conference must first decide whether it is in favour (of ordaining married men) and describe how it intends to go about this. And then it must bring its proposals before the Pope,” said the cardinal, a world-class theologian known to be close to Francis.

“I have the impression that if their application is well-founded, it will be met positively. The ball is therefore back in the bishops conferences’ court,” he said.

The cardinal said that as far as Germany and many parts of the Western world are concerned it is “imperative and most urgent” to discuss the possibility of ordaining viri probati because the shortage of priests has become drastic. “We simply cannot carry on with the situation as it is at present. Priests today are often managers with four or five parishes to look after. They have no time for pastoral work,” the 84-year-old cardinal said.

The Vatican has said Pope Francis will continue with his visit to Egypt later this month despite raised security fears following the deadly terrorist attacks on churches at the weekend.

Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, a top diplomat at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, said the Pope is sticking with his plan to make the trip to Cairo on 28-29 April, where Francis will address a conference on peace at the famous Al-Azhar university.

“What happened causes confusion and great suffering but it cannot prevent the Pope’s mission for peace,” the archbishop explained in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “Without hiding from reality the Pope invites us to look to the future with hope. And as always he wants to led by example.” The Palm Sunday attacks on two Coptic churches killed at least 44 with fundamentalist group Daesh – Islamic State – claiming responsibility for the atrocities.

Archbishop Becciu stressed that dialogue with the Islamic world was a way of “isolating” extremists and that the Pope wanted distinguish between acts of terror and the Muslim faith, something which has gained him the respect of Arab leaders.

“The honesty of his positions have earned him the gratitude of Muslims,” he explained. “Many Islamic authorities have met the Pope to thank him, while many others have written to express admiration for his moral authority.” Coptic Pope survives unharmed as at least 44 die In Palm Sunday suicide attacks in Egypt. When he is in Egypt Francis’ meetings will take place in secure and tightly-controlled locations while the papal Mass will be cele- brated amidst high security at a closed stadium of Cairo attended by around 30,000 faithful.

A visiting lecturer at Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) has been dismissed after arguing that abortion was murder in his philosophy class for first-year students and saying it could be “worse than rape.”

The comments by Stéphane Mercier created an uproar at the university, the francophone twin of the Flemish-language Catholic University of Leuven, after a feminist group complained he was presenting his personal opinions in the class. UCL first suspended Mercier’s two courses while his case was reviewed. He later received a letter from the university advising him of his dismissal without giving any reason, he told the Belgian Church information service CathoBel.

Amid the discussion, the Belgian bishops’ conference repeated the Church’s opposition to abortion but also expressed confidence in UCL’s internal review. A spokesman stressed the issue was between UCL and Mercier and that he was not an employee of the Church.

A UCL statement said his courses were suspended because “the serenity required for teaching was not assured.” It said its inquiry had led to disciplinary measures against Mercier but did not disclose the details.

Mexicans who help build President Donald Trump’s planned border wall would be acting immorally and should be deemed traitors, the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico said, turning up the heat on a simmering dispute over the project. In a provocative editorial published Sunday (March 26), the country’s biggest archdiocese sought to increase pressure on the government to take a tougher line on companies aiming to profit from the wall, which has strained relations between Trump and the Mexican government.
“Any company intending to invest in the wall of the fanatic Trump would be immoral, but above all, its shareholders and owners should be considered traitors to the homeland,” said the editorial in Desde la fe, the archdiocese’s weekly publication.
On March 28 , Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo warned firms it would not be in their “interests” to participate in the wall. But the editorial accused the government of responding “tepidly” to those eyeing the project for business.
A spokesman for the archdiocese, which centres on Mexico City and is presided over by the country’s foremost Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, said the editorial represented the views of the diocese.

A culture that protects life from conception to natural death is the only answer to the idea that some lives are expendable due to inconvenience or population control, Pope Francis said.

Following in the path of St Teresa of Calcutta, Christians are called to stand up and defend the lives of the unborn and the vulnerable, the Pope said on February 5 in his remarks after the recitation of the Angelus prayer. “We are close to and pray together for the children who are in danger with the termination of pregnancy, as well as for people who are at the end of their lives; every life is sacred,” he said.

The Pope commemorated the Day for Life celebration promoted by the Italian bishops’ conference. The theme of the 2017 commemoration was “Women and men for life in the footsteps of St Teresa of Calcutta.”

Citing Mother Teresa’s call to fight for life, the Pope joined the Italian bishops’ appeal for “courageous educational action in favour of human life.”