Last night, I was having a chat with a Catholic friend. We were discussing something I had tweeted a couple of days ago: I still can’t figure out how they haven’t figured out how problematic these optics are. https://t.co/4IEVLCfzDb — Steve Skojec (@SteveSkojec) April 15, 2019 “It honestly baffles me,” my friend says. “I am…
Image via @princess_redd / Twitter Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has been burning for hours. It appears there will not be much left of France’s most iconic Catholic church by tomorrow morning. The blaze, which has already consumed the cathedral’s spire and collapsed the roof, was reported to have begun with a small fire, possibly…
Yesterday, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI broke his post-pontificate “silence” yet again in a 6,000-word essay about the crisis of clerical sex abuse in the Church, and his perspective on its origins. The letter was, he says, written in response to the February summit in Rome in which the heads of the world’s episcopal conferences came…
Martha Alegria Reichman is the widow of the late Alejandro Vallardes, who served as the Honduran ambassador to the Holy See for over two decades. She recently published a book about Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the leader of the pope’s council of cardinal-advisers and a figure increasingly associated with scandal. The book, entitled Sacred…
As had been widely speculated, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta was appointed Thursday to succeed Cardinal Donald Wuerl as the archbishop of Washington. The archdiocese has fallen under heavy scrutiny after its two most recent bishops have become emblematic of the clerical sex abuse crisis — Theodore McCarrick for his alleged abuse of priests, seminarians, and…
Asked by a journalist during the in-flight press conference home from Morocco about the potential consequences of his visit “for the future, for world peace, for coexistence in the dialogue between cultures,” Pope Francis responded: I will say that now there are flowers, the fruits will come later, but the flowers are promising. I am…
When I was about 16 years old, I remember lying in my bed and hearing the muffled conversation of my parents in the next room. All of my five younger siblings were asleep, and whatever it was that my parents were talking about, whatever stresses were upon them in that moment, I felt this overwhelming…
Last year, Archbishop Viganò alleged that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis’s handpicked secretary of state, was “complicit in covering up the misdeeds” of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Despite that grave accusation, Antonio Socci says that meetings of cardinals about a possible conclave have been taking place, with Parolin as the clear frontrunner. A year ago, Parolin…
Last week, it was announced by the Australian court system that Cardinal George Pell had been convicted in December of child sex abuse. The media had been prevented from reporting on the verdict because there was a hope of moving forward with yet another trial against the cardinal. That trial against Pell fell apart. Another,…
I’m not even going to attempt to present this one as a straight news piece. The inescapable feeling one gets when looking at the story is that it’s a farce. After months under an Australian court’s gag order, the December conviction of Cardinal George Pell on decades-old sex abuse allegations has just been announced. The…
Editor’s Note: Despite our stated concerns about the forthcoming Martel book about homosexuality in the Vatican, it presents information that is undeniably going to shape the conversation around the abuse crisis going forward. This, from Marco Tosatti, concerns an important piece of the puzzle. Sodom [which in English is entitled In the Closet of the Vatican], the…
Please help us to meet our expenses by donating today!
