Catholic Church

Peter Isely, survivor of sexual abuse, and founder of ECA (Ending Clergy Abuse) Tim Law attend a march with survivors of clergy sexual abuse and activists near the Vatican, in Rome, Sept. 27, 2023. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

A group of Catholic Church abuse victims and their advocates on Wednesday called on Pope Francis to enforce “zero tolerance” against clerical sex abuse, after completing a six-day pilgrimage to Rome carrying a large wooden cross.

Bill McKibben 11-16-2022
An overhead view of people walking in a single line and branching off into smaller ones with illustrated leaves, evoking the design of a tree.

DigtialStorm / iStock

I GOT TO spend a couple of days this autumn at the 25th annual Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice — it was the first time I’d been there, and it cheered me immensely. Formed in the 1990s in response to the murder of Jesuit priests and lay leaders in El Salvador, it was originally held outside the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia, where the officer corps of often-repressive armies trained (including the Salvadoran military who murdered the Jesuits). Civil disobedience was often a feature of the Teach-In.

Now, it’s held in D.C., and mainly young people attend: a couple of thousand students at Jesuit high schools and colleges across the nation. This year’s participants were a diverse bunch, and extraordinary in the quality of their attention and engagement. I came away heartened, even amid the political chaos of the moment.

Mitchell Atencio 8-30-2022

Catholic women with parasols expressing the call for women’s ordination in the church at the Vatican, Aug. 29, 2022. Courtesy Women’s Ordination Conference.

Kate McElwee, the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference and one of the women at the protest, spoke with Sojourners’ Mitchell Atencio about her hope for women’s ordination, Francis’ attitude toward reforms, and the symbolic nature of their activism.

Pope Francis speaks during an exclusive interview with Reuters, at the Vatican, July 2, 2022. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
 

Pope Francis said that while the Vatican’s secret and contested agreement with China on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops is not ideal, he hopes it can be renewed in October because the church takes the long view.

People take part in the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession led by Pope Francis during Good Friday celebrations at Rome’s Colosseum on April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

The Vatican’s decision to have both Ukrainians and Russians take part in Pope Francis’ “Way of the Cross” procession on Friday has caused friction with Ukrainian Catholic leaders, who want it to be reconsidered.

Melissa Cedillo 4-01-2022

Silvia Perez marches during a protest of Wendy’s in southwest Florida in Oct. 2018. Photo Courtesy CIW.

Farmworkers in Palm Beach, Fla. are set to march five miles in protest of Wendy’s treatment of farmworkers, and their protest has received a blessing from the Archbishop Thomas Wenski.

Philippine Catholic priest Father Nap Baltazar, wearing a bracelet that reads "Let Leni Lead" in support of presidential aspirant Vice President Leni Robredo, fixes his stole before a mass in Sta. Rita de Cascia Parish on March 10, 2022. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez

When Philippine Catholic priest Father Nap Baltazar raised his hands to bless the people attending mass, the sleeves on his white vestment slid back to reveal a pink bracelet inscribed with the words “Let Leni Lead.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI arrives at the airport for his return flight to the Vatican. Pope Benedict on Tuesday asked victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for forgiveness but rejected allegations that he was involved in any cover-up. Reuters

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Tuesday asked victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for forgiveness but rejected allegations that he was involved in any cover-up. The retired pontiff was responding to an independent report, released on January 20, which chronicles decades of alleged abuse and misconduct in the archdiocese of Munich, which he led as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1977 and 1982.

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich S.J., Archbishop of Luxembourg, (in mask) greets Pope Francis at the opening of the Synodal Path at the Vatican Oct. 9, 2021. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

A prominent liberal cardinal who leads a body representing European bishops has called for “fundamental revision” in Catholic teaching on homosexuality, and said it is wrong to fire Church workers for being LGBTQ.

Pope Benedict XVI finishes his last general audience in St Peter's Square at the Vatican Feb. 27, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi/File Photo

Former Pope Benedict XVI failed to take action against clerics in four cases of alleged sexual abuse in his archdiocese when he was archbishop of Munich, a report found on Thursday.

Pope Francis meets with diplomats from more than 180 countries, at the Vatican, January 10, 2022. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

Pope Francis on Monday condemned “baseless” ideological misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, backing national immunization campaigns and calling health care a moral obligation.

Jim Rice 12-28-2021
Illustration of a groovy fist emerging from a megaphone to bump another fist

Illustration by Tiarra Lucas

FOR ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ Gomez of Los Angeles, social justice movements are “pseudo-religions.” In a November speech, Gomez said that “today’s critical theories” are “profoundly atheistic,” that they spring from a “Marxist cultural vision,” and that they “resemble” heresies in church history. He even blamed social justice movements for “causing new forms of social division, discrimination, intolerance, and injustice.”

Black Catholic theologians and others responded to Gomez’s remarks with a petition that read, in part, “Your speech was particularly painful and offensive to Black Catholic advocates in the United States who have organized for racial justice in the face of indifference and even hostility from many white Christians.” The National Black Sisters’ Conference pointed out that “BLM is not a pseudo-religion; nor is it a ‘dangerous substitute for true religion.’ It is a movement very much in the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.” And someone ought to introduce Archbishop Gomez to Pope Francis who, in his message for World Youth Day this fall, encouraged young people to “Arise! Uphold social justice, truth, and integrity, human rights. Protect the persecuted, the poor and the vulnerable, those who have no voice in society, immigrants.”

Pope Francis looks on as he holds the weekly general audience at the Paul VI Audience Hall, at the Vatican, Nov. 24, 2021. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

Pope Francis said on Monday that migrants were being exploited as “pawns” on a political chessboard in an apparent reference to the crisis at the Belarus border.

Thousands of migrants are stuck on the European Union’s eastern frontier in what the EU says is a crisis Minsk (Belarus’ capital city) engineered by distributing Belarusian visas in the Middle East, flying them in and letting them go to the border.


A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., June 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a bid by a Catholic hospital in California to avoid a lawsuit over its refusal to let its facilities be used to perform a hysterectomy on a transgender patient who sought the procedure as a part of gender transition from female to male.

The justices turned away an appeal by Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a Sacramento-area hospital owned by Dignity Health, and let stand a lower court ruling that revived Evan Minton’s lawsuit accusing it of intentionally discriminating against him in violation of California law because he is transgender.

The justices on Monday also bolstered a Roman Catholic-led challenge to a New York state requirement that health insurance policies provided by employers cover abortion services. The justices told a lower court to reconsider its decision to throw out a bid by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and other plaintiffs to widen an existing religious exemption to a 2017 state regulation that requires health insurance policies to cover medically necessary abortions.

Jeff Mason, Reuters 10-14-2021

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about global transportation supply chain bottlenecks from the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., October 13, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis

President Joe Biden will meet with Pope Francis on Oct. 29 before attending a two-day summit of G-20 leaders in Rome where he hopes to reach agreement on a Global Minimum Tax of 15 percent, White House officials said on Thursday.

On the second foreign trip of his presidency, Biden will then attend the U.N. climate conference known as COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, from Nov. 1-2 and announce key actions on the conference's top themes, including goals for fighting climate change and forest and land use, one White House official told Reuters.

 

Pope Francis leads a mass to open the synod of bishops in Vatican City, October 10, 2021. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

Pope Francis on Sunday launched a two-year worldwide consultative process that could change the way the Roman Catholic Church makes decisions and leave its mark long after his pontificate is over.

Proponents see the initiative called “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission” as an opportunity to change the church’s power dynamics and give a greater voice to lay Catholics, including women, and people on the margins of society.

Conservatives say the three-stage process is a waste of time, may erode the hierarchical structure of the 1.3 billion member church, and in the long run could dilute traditional doctrine.

A woman prays inside the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, France, October 4, 2021. Picture taken October 4, 2021. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

The church had shown "deep, total and even cruel indifference for years," protecting itself rather than the victims of what was systemic abuse, said Jean-Marc Sauve, head of the commission that compiled the report.

German bishops fold their hands in prayers during a service to open the annual bishop's conference in Fulda, September 25, 2007. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

“If we say that God is love, I cannot tell people who embrace loyalty, unity, and responsibility to each other that theirs is not love, that it's a fifth-or sixth-class love” said Christian Olding, a priest in the western city of Geldern.

Bekah McNeel 10-27-2020

Sister Jane Ann Slater.  Image via screenshot from Our Lady of the Lake University video

As political groups across the country make their last appeals to Christian voters, often pointing to a narrow set of issues, Sister Jane Ann Slater, chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, wants the people of faith to think more broadly — looking at the total of what a candidate or ballot proposition brings to the community.

Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I arrive for an inter-religious prayer service in Rome, Italy, on October 20, 2020. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

"Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family," says Francis in a new film.