In a new interview, Pope Francis has discussed the possibility of revising the Western discipline of priestly celibacy.
“There is no contradiction for a priest to marry. Celibacy in the Western Church is a temporary prescription: I do not know if it is settled in one way or another, but it is temporary in this sense,” Pope Francis said in an interview published on March 10.
“It is not eternal like priestly ordination, which is forever, whether you like it or not. Whether you leave or not is another matter, but it is forever. On the other hand, celibacy is a discipline.”
When asked by the Argentine journalist Daniel Hadad if celibacy “could be review-ed,” Pope Francis responded: “Yes, yes. In fact, everyone in the Eastern Church is ma-rried. Or those who want to. There they make a choice. Before ordination there is the choice to marry or to be celibate,” according to a transcript provided by Infobae.
In response to the interviewer’s inquiry if the pope thought that making celibacy opt-ional would lead more people to join the priesthood, Pope Francis said: “I do not think so,” noting that there are already married priests in the Catholic Church in the Eastern rites.
The pope added that earlier that day he had met with an Eastern Catholic priest who works in the Roman Curia who has a wife and a son.
Pope Francis has spoken about the value of priestly celibacy before. In January 2019 he said: “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church. I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no.”
The pope added at the time that he thinks there is room to consider some exceptions for married clergy in the Latin rite “when there is a pastoral necessity” in remote locations due to a lack of priests, such as in the Pacific islands.
The nearly one-hour-long interview published Friday with Infobae, a Miami-based Spanish-language online news outlet, also touched on Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua, drug trafficking in Latin America, the war in Ukraine, and marriage annulments.
When speaking of annulments, Pope Francis advised to look to what his prede-cessor Benedict XVI had said on the subject and said that “a large part of church marriages are invalid for lack of faith.”
“And think about it: Sometimes [one] goes to a wedding and it seems more like it’s a social reception and not a sacrament,” Pope Francis said.

These are the names of the four asteroids named after three astronomers from the Vatican Observatory, and Pope Gregory XIII.
Pope Gregory, who was born Ugo Boncompagni, is the Pope to whom we owe the reform of the calendar (later known as the Gregorian Calendar) and the beginning of the tradition of papal astronomers and observatories. The astronomers after whom three celestial bodies have been named are the Jesuits Johann Hagen, who was director of the Vatican Observatory from 1906 to 1930, Bill Stoeger, cosmologist and theologian, and Robert Janusz, currently on the staff of the Vatican Observatory.

There are currently 1,165 female employees working for the Pope, compared to only 846 in the year Francis took office in 2013. The percentage of women in the total workforce at the Vatican rose in the current pontificate from just under 19.2 to 23.4 per cent today. These figures refer to the two administrative units Holy See and Vatican City State together.
The increase in female employees is even more pronounced if one looks exclusively at the Holy See, i.e. the Roman Curia. Here, the proportion of women has risen from 19.3 to 26.1 per cent over the past ten years. This means that more than one in four employees at the Holy See is now a woman – in absolute figures 812 out of 3,114.
In the ten-part salary scale used in the Vatican, most women in the Curia have been found for many years on the sixth and seventh step. They thus exercise professions that usually require an academic degree, such as lawyers, department heads, archivists or administrative specialists. In 2022, 43% of the women employed at the Curia worked at the sixth and seventh levels.
Secretaries and undersecretaries are the second and third levels of management respectively in most curia authorities and are part of the management team together with the prefect, i.e. the superior of the authority; all three levels are filled by appointment by the Pope. At the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Pope Francis appointed a female secretary for the , the Italian religious Alessandra Smerilli. It is the highest post ever held by a woman at the Holy See.

Bishop Georg Bätzing has told reporters that the German bishops’ conference will proceed with the formation of a Synodal Council, despite clear opposition from the Vatican.
Bishop Bätzing, the president of the episcopal conference, said that the Synodal Council—composed of bishops and lay people, and tasked with setting policies for the Church in Germany—would be formed this month.
In a terse letter to three leading Vatican cardinal, the German bishops’ leader did not directly address the Vatican’s warning that the proposed Council would violate the proper authority of diocesan bishops. Instead he said that the German bishops would be happy to meet with Vatican officials to “clarify” the role of the new group as it develops.
The letter from Bishop Bätzing was addressed to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State; Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; and Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Nicaraguan government announced on March 2  that it has seized the assets of two Catholic universities and of Caritas Nicaragua, and effectively shuttered their operations by rescinding their legal status in the country.
The announcement comes amid an ongoing push against the Church by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, which has included the expulsion of religious communities, priests, and a papal delegate from the country, and the imprisonment of Bishop Rolando Álvarez on charges of anti-government activity.
According to an official announcement both the Universidad Juan Pablo II and the Universidad Cristiana Autonoma de Nicaragua (UCAN) had failed to comply with financial and governance reporting laws, reportedly not filing with the government information about their boards of directors or financial position.
Fr. Rafael Aragón, a Spanish Dominican friar, lived for 40 years in Nicaragua, but was impeded in 2022 from reentering the country after a trip abroad.
Aragón told The Pillar that the move to close the universities is an attack on the Church because of its criticism of the Ortega administration.

A booklet arguing that “to abolish clericalism, we must abolish the clergy” has ignited controversy among Belgium’s Catholics.
Following the document’s publication, a petition opposing its thesis gathered more than 600 signatures in 48 hours, according to local media.
The almost 60-page text, entitled “Restore the Church to the People of God: To put an end to clericalism,” was written by nine people associated with the Diocese of Liège, drawing criticism from the local bishop.
The authors, who include two priests, wrote: “From our point of view, it is a false idea to think of ordaining women and/or married men. This idea is based on the need to have a clergy at all costs, even if it means changing the rules of access to the sacred. But this idea will in no way bring new life to the communities and to the Church. We are still in blind clericalism.”
“It is necessary to overturn this organization and these centuries-old practices to recover a community dynamic closer to the spirit of Jesus Christ.”
They added: “A well-known canonist in our diocese said that separating governance and priest-hood is nonsense… We affirm the opposite: it would be a service to the Church. We even think that, in order to abolish clericalism, we must abolish the clergy.”

The final assembly of the German Synodal Way took place in Frankfurt March 9-11, where 230 bishops and lay representatives discussed issues such as blessings for homosexual couples, the ordination of women, a relaxation of mandatory celibacy and greater church involvement for lay people.
The agenda, with 10 resolution texts, reflected the will of the local church to “arrive at visible changes,” the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, said in Frankfurt March 9. “This church deserves that we do not leave it as it is,” the German news agency KNA reported him saying.
The president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, Irme Stetter-Karp, said that looking back on the process so far, “there were phases of disappointment, of anger and of despair, but also phases of euphoria and of successful cooperation. Now we have to prove that we were worthy of the trust so many people placed in us.”
On March 10, KNA reported, the assembly decided that in the near future, there will be blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples in the Catholic Church in Germany. It also said people who have divorced and then remarried in a civil partnership also should be able to have their relationships blessed in the Catholic Church.
Following a controversial debate, KNA wrote, the Synodal Path reform project adopted a corresponding text in Frankfurt on March 10, with a majority of over 90%. The paper recommends developing and introducing appropriate liturgical celebrations and ceremonies.
Of the 58 bishops who voted, 38 voted in favour, nine voted against and 11 abstained. Since abstentions in the vote on the Synodal Path are counted as votes not cast, the result was counted as a majority of just under 81% in favour. Twenty votes against would have been enough to reject the text, since according to the statutes, the bishops must approve decisions with a two-thirds majority.

A Dutch cardinal has said that he is pressing ahead with a plan to phase out Sunday Word and Communion services in the absence of a priest within his territory.
Cardinal Willem Eijk, the Archbishop of Utrecht, said in a Feb. 14 letter that he was committed to eliminating the priestless Sunday celebrations over the next five years, so that the Mass can “occupy its rightful central place” among local Catholics, despite protests from some members of the archdiocese.
In parts of Europe that have seen sharp declines in priestly vocations, Catholics routinely gather on weekdays for Celebrations of the Word and Communion, led by a permanent deacon or lay person. Scripture readings and the proclamation of the Gospel are followed by the distribution of Holy Communion, consecrated at a previous Mass.

The China News Service (CNS) (chinanews.com.cn) describes the Catholic community of Yanjing as an “oasis of coexistence” between religions and a “place of encounter” between cultures Catholic community in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The second largest news agency of the People’s Republic of China, which disseminates news in Chinese and English, recently posted a detailed report on the “Tibetan community” online. The agency points out that the church building’s architectural features also combine Tibetan and Gothic elements, representing a fusion of different cultural traditions. But above all, the details and news collected in the report convey a vivid and evocative image of the small church community that profess faith in Jesus on the Roof of the world, where even Christian liturgical celebrations become an occasion for fraternal coexistence with fellow countrymen, the majority of whom are Buddhists.
The focus of the article is around the figure of Magdalene, the consecrated lay woman who for the past 26 years has de facto custody of the church. Magdalene rings the bells each day, leads the community’s daily prayer, recited in the Tibetan language, and also acts as a “tour guide” for visitors from outside when necessary. Magdalene also assists with devotion and concern the priests who come from Yunnan or other provinces to celebrate masses especially on the occasion of liturgical solemnities since there is no longer a permanent presence of a priest in the parish.
The story of Magdalene is not limited to describing the unique way in which the bond of fraternity that binds Tibetan Catholics to their fellow Buddhists is manifested. At Christmas, the more than 520 baptized of the 70 Catholic families who attend the parish also involve the rest of the population in the celebrations for the birth of Jesus. In the morning, after the solemn liturgical celebration, everyone gathers to eat the local cuisine. In the afternoon, Buddhists also help decorate the church with Christmas decorations.

Islamic religious leaders have backed an all-Muslim presidential ticket as a political “jihad” ahead of the Feb. 25 elections.
Nigeria’s Christian leaders are calling for both full engage-ment in the country’s democratic process, and faith in the viability of the country’s future, ahead of elections scheduled for Feb. 25, after Islamic religious leaders ha-ve backed an all-Muslim presi-dential ticket on religious grou-nds.
The country’s upcoming ele-ction took on religious signifi-cance after the governing All Pro-gressive Congress party decided to field an all-Muslim ticket for president and vice president, in a departure from the country’s customary electoral practice, which sees parties pairing a Muslim and a Christian.
The APC ticket has drawn support from prominent Islamic clerics in Nigeria, who have called on the country’s Muslims to vote along religious lines, fueling national tensions amid an ongoing series of mass attacks on Christian communities.