A Brazilian man who was forcibly laicized by the Church two years ago, meaning expelled from the priesthood, is now appealing to the secular Supreme Court in the world’s largest Catholic country, in effect seeking damages against the church he claims unjustly penalized him.
Although laicization is an internal church matter and thus normally considered beyond the reach of secular courts, an attorney for the ex-priest is arguing that because the Vatican has treaty agreements with Brazil, it’s obligated to abide by Brazilian guarantees of due process and a right to defence.
The lawsuit does not seek to compel the church to reinstate Alcimir Pillotto to the priesthood, but rather to force the church to reinstate his pension and cover his insurance costs. The case already has been dismissed at lower levels, but attorneys are now vowing to take it to the country’s Supreme Court.
Pillotto, who had been in charge of a parish in the city of Blumenau in Brazil’s Santa Catarina State in the southern part of the country, was expelled from the clerical state in 2020.

Pope Francis on December 28 thanked retired Pope Benedict XVI for his silent service to the church and asked the faithful to offer special prayers for his predecessor, who, Francis said, is “very sick.”
Speaking during his Dec. 28 General Audience, the pope said, “I would like to ask you all to say a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who, in silence, is supporting the Church: remember him, he is very sick, asking the Lord to console him and support him in this witness of love for the Church until the end.”
In a statement, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed that “in the past few hours there has been an aggravation” in Benedict’s health “due to advanced age,” but that “the situation at the moment is under control, followed constantly by the doctors.”
According to the statement, Pope Francis after his general audience went to the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae monastery to visit Benedict XVI. “We join him in praying for the Pope Emeritus,” it said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources with knowledge of Benedict XVI’s condition told he was “normal” as of a week ago, and they did not believe there was reason to think his life was at immediate risk. Elected in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI sent shockwaves around the world when he renounced the papacy in 2013, becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign, saying he lacked the physical and mental strength required to fulfil the demands of guiding the Catholic Church.
Since stepping down, Benedict has resided in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican gardens, receiving occasional visi-tors, including Pope Francis and new cardinals during a consistory, and writing various contributions to books and conferences, as well as letters to friends.
Apart from a handful of conversations with mostly German-speaking journalists, he has largely kept to his vow to live “hidden to the world,” though at times media attention to his rare public remarks and writings has tended to pit him against his successor.

After Argentina’s victory at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a promise made by soccer superstar Lionel Messi to the Virgin Mary has resurfaced. Will he fulfill it?
Lionel Messi, 35, played his fifth World Cup wearing Argentina’s jersey and the team became world champion by beating France on Sunday.
Considered one of the best players in the world, Messi has won 40 titles, 34 with Futbol Club Barcelona (FC) in Spain, two with Paris Saint Germain (PSG) in France, and four with the Argentine National Team. In his career, according to his own words, “this was missing” — to be world champion as a member of his country’s team.
In 2014, the team of which he is captain reached the final in the World Cup in Brazil, where they lost to Germany. In Russia in 2018, Argentina was left out of the competition in the Round of 16.
It was precisely at that World Cup that he made a special promise to the Virgin.
In an interview in Moscow with the Argentine journalist Martín Arévalo, Messi was challenged by the reporter to walk “to Luján or to San Nicolás,” two of the most important shrines in Argentina, if the team won the World Cup.
Lujan, Argentina, is the site of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lujan, the patroness of the country, which every year attracts millions of pilgrims.
In San Nicolás — a city near Rosario, Messi’s birthplace — is the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of San Nicolás, which has a history of Marian apparitions that began in 1983 with messages from the Virgin to Gladys Quiroga de Motta During his career, Messi has shown devotion to God and to be a believer. After winning the World Cup, his statements to the press did not omit the role that he attributes to the Lord in the victory: “I knew that God was going to grant this gift to me, I had a presentiment that it was going to be this,” he told the TyC Sports television channel.

With a giant evergreen tree, colourful balloons in the streets and selfies in the Church of the Nativity, Christmas tourism has returned to Bethlehem after two years of Covid-related restrictions.
Revered in Christian tradition as the birthplace of Christ, the town of Bethlehem welcomes thousands of pilgrims and tourists for Christmas every year, a windfall that dried up over the past two years due to the coronavirus pandemic and travel restrictions.
Now with restrictions lifted in the Palestinian territories and Israel, where the closest international airport with access to Bethlehem is located, the southern West Bank town has taken on a festive air.
Scouts marched with bagpipes as thousands of onlookers lining the streets held balloons and cotton candy.
With travel restrictions lifted in the Palestinian territories and Israel, where the closest international airport with access to Bethlehem is located, the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem has taken on a festive air.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, greeted worshippers upon his arrival to the town, ahead of leading the annual Christmas eve procession at the Church of the Nativity.
“Christmas is the town’s celebration, and we put in a lot of time and effort to prepare for it,” Bethlehem mayor Hanna Hanania told.

For millions of Christians around the world, the official religious Christmas season kicked off this week with a renewed sense of normalcy – an abundance of colourful lights, parades and processions, family and church gatherings, and even fireworks in some areas.
Many believers in countries where Christians are religious minorities such as China and India are embracing the festivities with new enthusiasm. Early December marks the first time annual public and private advent gatherings have been allowed since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet, in Nicaragua, a predominantly Christian nation, festivities planned by some of its most devout believers are running afoul of harsh new government restrictions that have nothing to do with the pandemic.
A parish in the Archdiocese of Managua reported on its Facebook page that the National Police, which operates under the orders of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, prohibited it from going ahead with a planned procession commemorating the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Celebrated on Dec. 8, the feast is one of the most important in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, venerating the Virgin Mary and marking the start of the Christmas season in many countries, including Italy, where it’s a national holiday.

An automobile burned amid December 2022 terror attacks in Malagum 1 community of Kagoro Chiefdom, Kaura Local Government Council, Southern Kaduna, Kaduna State, Nigeria. Credit: Fr. Mattew Saleh.
At least 46 villagers were killed last week in northern Nigeria, in two separate attacks believed to have been perpetrated by a group of Fulani herdsmen.
A local diocesan official told The Pillar that priests are providing spiritual care, as local Christians prepare for Christmas after a devastating and unexpected attack.
The attacks took place over three days, and across four villages in Kaduna, a state in the northern region of Nigeria.
Attackers reportedly lit fire to houses in two villages late in the evening of Dec. 11; humanita-rian agencies report that some victims were burnt alive as they slept. The violence continued in attacks on two other villages in the days following.
“The killings … started around 11pm Sunday night simultaneously [and] lasted for long, poor innocent citizens were killed,” the Southern Kaduna Peoples’ Union, a local humanitarian agency, said in a Dec. 19 statement.
The carnage left no “less than 100 houses razed, with some victims burnt alive,” the aid group said.

Exchanging traditional Christmas greetings with members of the Roman Curia on December 22 , Pope Francis delivered a seven-point speech in which he asked them to never take the Lord’s graces for granted, to always walk a path of conversion, and to be peace-makers at a time in which we have never “felt so great a desire for peace.”
Reflecting on how Jesus’ birth in a simple and poor manger is a lesson in seeing things as they really are, he said “each of us is call-ed to return to what is essential in our own lives, to discard all that is superfluous and a potential hindrance on the path of holiness.”
The Pope went on to call for what he described as the most important interior attitude: gratitude.” Only when we are conscious of the Lord’s goodness to us can we also give a name to the evil that we have experienced or endured. The realization of our poverty, without the realization of God’s love, would crush us,” he said.
“Without a constant exercise of gratitude, we would end up simply cataloguing our failures and lose sight of what counts most: the graces that the Lord grants us each day.”
Reflecting on an eventful year, the Holy Father said that “before anything else, we want to thank the Lord for all His blessings. Yet we hope that among those blessings is that of our conversion.”
“Conversion is a never-ending story. The worst thing that could happen to us is to think that we are no longer in need of conversion, either as individuals or as a community.”
The Holy Father said that this process is far from complete and noted that the current reflection on the Church’s synodality high-lights how the process of understanding Christ’s message never ends, but constantly challenges us to keep Christ’s message alive and not imprison it.
He stressed the need for vigilance, warn-ing those present that it would naïve to think evil is permanently uprooted: “In short order, it comes back under a new guise.”
“Before, it [evil] appeared rough and violent, now it shows up as elegant and refined. We need to realize that and once again to unmask it.”

“The person who is trust-worthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones.”
Pope Francis quotes Lk 16:10 at the start of the Motu Proprio released on Tuesday concerning instrumental juridical persons, including funds, foundations and entities that refer to the Holy See, and are registered in the list referred to in Article 1 § 1 of the Statute of the Council for the Economy, and having their headquarters in Vatican City State.
“Although these entities have a formally separate juridical personality and a certain administrative autonomy, it must be recognized,” the Pope says, “that they are instrumental in the realization of the ends proper to the curial institutions at the service of the ministry of the Successor of Peter.”

An architect of Germany’s “synodal way” has explained how organizers used tactics employed successfully in politics to build pressure for change in the Catholic Church.
Thomas Sternberg said in a Dec. 2 interview that issues such as married clergy, women priests, and homosexuality were “opened up” by the initiative and were now being “discussed internationally, not only in Germany.”
Sternberg was co-president of the synodal way when it was officially launched on Dec. 1, 2019, until he stood down as president of the influential Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) in 2021.
He told the Cologne-based Catholic news website Domradio.de that the multi-year process — which brings together Germany’s bishops and select lay people to discuss power, the priesthood, women in the Church, and sexuality — was “running much more successfully” than he had first imagined.
He noted that Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, had “want-ed to stop the whole thing” three years ago.
“What is now happening here in Germany is a non-binding discussion process from the per-spective of canon law.”

The Catholic population in the United States has grown by about 2 million people in 10 years. With nearly 62 million people, it continues to constitute the largest religious body in 36 U.S. states, according to the latest religion-focused survey of America’s religious congregations.
Over the last decade, many Catholics, the survey found, have moved to the South.
“Perhaps the most notable changes were by region,” Clifford Grammich, a political scientist involved in the U.S. Religion Census, told CNA Dec. 5. “Fifty years ago, 71% of U.S. Catholics were in the Northeast and Midwest; in 2020, 45% were. And the South now has more Catholics than any other region. I was surprised to see there are now more Catholics than Southern Baptists in Missouri and Virginia.”
The U.S. Religion Census is conducted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies every 10 years. Its latest report was released last month.
Its 2020 survey reported that there were 61.9 million Catholics in the U.S., about 18.7% of the population. The survey identified 372 religious bodies with more than 356,000 congregations and 161.4 million adherents in the United States.