A group of 90 Catholic clergy-men, scholars and authors have published a joint letter to “all Cardinals and Bishops of the Catholic Church,” urging them to oppose a Vatican document approved by Pope Francis that allows priests to bless same-sex unions for the first time.
In the letter, the Catholic conservatives say that Fiducia Supplicans, a Vatican doctrine released on December 18 and signed by the Pope, would lead to the blessing of “objectively sinful” relationships. They add that the cardinals and bishops should “forbid immediately the application of this document in your diocese” and “ask directly the Pope to urgently withdraw this unfortunate document, which is in contradiction with both Scripture and the universal and un-interrupted Tradition of the Church.”
The Fiducia Supplicans permits the blessing of those couples not considered to be married, according to the Catholic Church, including those that are same sex. This has proven deeply controversial within the global church, winning praise from reformers, while infuriating conservatives and being openly opposed by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.
Those who have signed the open letter include Gil Bailie, a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars; Dr. Regis Martin, a professor of theology at Franciscan University Steubenville; and Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Catholic St. John Henry Newman Institute in Michigan.
The letter was published by LifeSiteNews.com, a media out-let dedicated to promoting “the great importance to society of traditional Judeo-Christian moral principles,” and signed by its editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen. The website also hosts a public petition signed urging bishops to “prohibit the ‘blessing’ of sinful unions in your diocese,” which has received over 21,000 signatories.

An African cardinal who recently led the continent’s bishops in rejecting blessings for same-sex couples has now lashed out at the timing of the Vatican document that opened the door to such a move, calling it “damaging” to the synodal process convened by Pope Francis.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa in the Democratic Re-public of Congo said that because the Dec. 18 release of Fiducia Supplicans, which authorized non-liturgical blessings of the persons involved in same-sex relation-ships, came between the two Synods of Bishops on Synodality, it created the misleading notion that the document was the fruit of synodal discussions.
“The timing, the moment when this document was publi-shed, was damaging for the synodal process,” Ambongo said Jan. 25.
The 64-year-old Ambongo, who also serves as president of the Symposium of Episcopal Con-ferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), said the timing of the document’s release “brought discredit to the synod, to synodality.”
Ambongo’s comments came in a press conference during a Jan. 24-26 joint meeting between representatives of SECAM and the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Pope Francis met with members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on February 8 morning to discuss the importance of liturgical re-form as a core feature of the broader “renewal of the Church.”
The address comes as the dicastery is meeting for its annual plenary assembly, which is addressing the “liturgical for-mation from Sacrosanctum Con-cilium to Desiderio Desideravi” for ordained ministers as well as “liturgical training courses for the people of God.”
The meeting will also seek to “provide bishops with practical suggestions for developing pastoral projects in their dioceses with the aim of putting into practice the reflections of the papal document,” a Feb. 5 press release from the dicastery stated.
Recalling that it has been 60 years since the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council’s seminal document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the pope stressed in his Feb. 8 address that liturgical reform underscored the council fathers’ objective of renewing the Church’s “fundamental dimensions” such as “spiritual, pastoral, ecumenical, and missionary” work.
“Without liturgical reform there is no reform of the Church,” the pope said.

Of the 508 American religious communities which responded to a new survey on the number of men and women who professed perpetual vows in 2023, a total of 438, representing 87 percent, reported that they didn’t have a single member who did so, and only 23 reported that they had more than one.
That tally reinforces other recent data confirming declines in the number of men and women religious in the United States, including a recent projection from the U.S. bishops’ conference that the total will drop 50 percent over the next decade, from 33,000 in 2023 to approximately 17,000 in 2033.
According to a 2023 study by the National Religious Retirement Office, members of religious communities who are 70 or older outnumber those who are younger than 70 by nearly three to one. The data found that the average age of a female religious in the U.S. is 74.85, and 67.64 for men. In the U.S., 55 percent of women religious, and 25 percent of male religious, are over 80 years old.
Aside from declines, the new survey also profiles the new men and women making perpetual vows today.
Major superiors of those 508 religious institutes identified a total of 144 men and women who professed perpetual vows in 2023, including 68 women and 76 men. Of those 144 individuals, the surveyors got responses from 101 to compile further information about demographics, family background, education history, and occupational and ministerial experience.
The survey found that the average age of new religious professing perpetual vows is 36, with half of the responding individuals being age 33 or younger. In terms of race, two-thirds are Caucasian, European American, or White.
The most unanimous finding was that nearly all, or 99 percent, of those 101 men and women who were surveyed were raised by their biological parents during what the survey calls “the most formative part of their childhood.”

It’s being called a successful negotiation between the Holy See and the regime of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The government in the Central American nation this past January 14 announced that it had released Bishop Rolando Alvarez from prison and exiled him to Rome. It also freed another bishop, 15 priests, and two seminarians and sent them to the Italian capital, as well.
Bishop Alvarez, a prominent figure in the Nicaraguan Church and one of last voices opposition to the Ortega dictatorship that was still in the country, had been under house arrest since August 2022. After refusing to board a plane bound for the United States with 222 political prisoners he was sentenced to twenty-six years in prison in February 2023. The following July, the defiant bishop again declined the possibility of negotiated exile with the Vatican, and in October, he was not among the twelve priests expelled to Rome after an “agreement” between the Holy See and Mana-gua. But on January 14, nearly a year after his sentencing.

A group of 60 “slum priests” in Pope Francis’s native country released a January 19 statement denouncing what they described as deteriorating living conditions for millions of impoverished Argentines, driven by rising food prices and decreasing earnings.
Though he’s only been in office for a little over a month, new Argentine President Javier Milei nervetheless came in for criticism by the “slum priests,” who asse-rted that his minimalist concept-ion of the role of the government in society is contributing to the crisis.
“We declare in the letter that the current situation hasn’t begun with this administration. Drugs, poverty, hunger, and unemploy-ment are not something new in the poor neighborhoods,” Father Pablo Viola, who works in a poor parish of Córdoba, told.
“What’s new is that we believe that such issues can become even more complicated if the current administration really reduces the presence of the state in the slums,” Viola said.
Viola said the new admini-stration’s libertarian ideology prevents it from seeing “the complexity of the interests of different social segments and the hardships faced by the middle-class and the poor.”
He also claimed that Milei’s program is at odds with Catholic teaching, not to mention Pope Francis’s own vision.

The shooting happened at the Church of Santa Maria during Sunday mass at around 11:40 local time (08:40 GMT). Turkey’s interior minister later said on X, formerly Twitter: “The two mur-der suspects have been captured,” without giving further details on the motive of the attack.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a post on Telegram the group said two of its fighters had carried out the attack and then fled to safety.
CCTV released by Turkish media shows the moment of the attack. Worshippers were on their feet, facing the altar, when two gunmen came into the back of the church.
They appeared to be following a man who had just come in. After he was shot and fatally wounded, the gunmen calmly left.
The 19th Century church sits behind high walls, close to a small fish market, by the Bosphorus on the European side of Istanbul. The streets around it have been closed off by police.
Inside the church, investiga-tors took statements from those who were there when the attackers struck.
The Turkish Interior Minister, Ali Yerlikaya, who visited the scene said that an individual identified only as CT had died in the attack.
Speaking to reporters outside the church, Istanbul governor Davut Gul said the victim was a Turkish national and that no one else was hurt. He said the atta-ckers only fired at one person.
It was not immediately clear what the motive for the attack was or why the victim was targeted.

In a notification on Jan. 22, the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training in Paki-stan approved a new curriculum, which makes studying Islam non-compulsory for Christian, Bahai, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Zo-roastrian students in the Islamic nation.
The Religious Education Cu-rriculum 2023 for Grades 1 to Grade 12 will be introduced from the next academic year in 2024-2025.
The Catholic Church has been urging the government to make provision for non-Muslim students to receive religious education in their faith instead of Islamiat, which comprises courses on Isla-mic beliefs and practices.
Naeem Yousaf Gill, director of the National Commission of Justice and Peace, the rights body of the Pakistani bishops’ council, welcomed the development.
“We appreciate the govern-ment for involving Catholic bi-shops in developing the syllabus of Christianity. However, its mo-nitoring and implementation is another challenge. Policies for minorities often flop in our coun-try,” he told.
Pakistan has one of the lowest budgetary allocations for educa-tion in South Asia. The nation allotted 1.7 percent of its GDP for education in the fiscal year 2022-23 against 1.4 percent earlier.
“The long-term process will require training of teachers and a salary structure,” Gill observed.
In 2020, the provincial Punjab government made it compulsory for Muslim students to study the Quran, and non-Muslim students were asked to study ethics in lieu of Islamiat from Grade 3.

In the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck, Austria, featuring regional art of the Tyrol, there is a collection of magnificently, and intricately, carved nativity scenes. One of them shows the manger set amidst the mountainous Alps, with medieval towers looking down on the scene. That carving may not be historically accurate, but it is not heresy either. Its lack of historical precision does not undermine the doctrine of the incarnation. On the contrary, the Tyrolean manger exemplifies the doctrine. We Catholics believe that, just as the Son of God took on human flesh, the Christian faith can and must inculturate itself, adapting to the goodness inherent in all human cultures even while purifying any elements that are inherently contrary to the Gospel.
I thought of that manger scene when reading the response of the African bishops to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s decree Fiducia supplicans. The Vatican document said that while not changing the church’s perennial doctrine about marriage, it wanted to commend the practice of giving non-liturgical, spontaneous blessings to couples who are in an irregular union, whether because they are divorced or remarried or because they are in a same-sex relationship.
“We, the African bishops, do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities,” the statement read. Signed by Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM, the statement represented the united voice of the African bishops.
How is that different, then, from the decision by the German Synodal Way in March 2023 to affirm the practice of blessing same-sex couples? The article about the German decision noted, “German bishops face pressure from frustrated grassroots Catholics in a country where Christians are roughly equally divided between Protestants and Catholics.” In Germany, unlike Africa, it seems scandalous to many Catholics that the Catholic Church does not bless same-sex couples.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Va-tican secretary of state, said the debate surrounding the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration on the possibility of blessing gay couples shows that deeper reflection is still needed.
At the same time, he said, the reaction is a normal and healthy part of the Catholic Church learning how to take Gospel values and apply them to new situations.
Speaking to reporters who were attending his speech on the Holy See and peacemaking Jan. 12 at Rome’s Academy of the Lincei, the cardinal was asked if the turmoil surrounding the document on blessings was good or bad.
“It is always good,” the cardinal replied, according to Vatican News. “The important thing is that we always proceed according to what is called ‘progress in continuity.’”
“In the Church there has always been change,” he said. “The Church of today is not the Church of 2,000 years ago. The Church is open to the signs of the times; it is attentive to needs that arise, but it also must be faithful to the Gospel, it must be faithful to tradition, faithful to its heritage.”
“But if this upheaval helps us walk according to the Gospel in responding, then it is welcome,” he said.