Image: Yet another downward spiral at the Vatican. Yesterday, when we hit publish on the story about five alleged questions the pope asked Cardinal Müller before informing him his mandate as prefect of the CDF would not be renewed, I knew we were opening the door to backlash, outrage, and accusations. This is only the second…
UPDATE: When this story was first issued, we had not yet received any response from Cardinal Müller, his secretary, or Greg Burke, Director of the Vatican Press office. Burke has since responded to say that the reconstruction of the events of the Müller meeting as described below is “totally false”. The personal secretary of Cardinal Müller has…
Image credit: Dr. Michael Hesemann As we reported earlier this week, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, one of the four dubia cardinals, passed away on 5 July. The German cardinal fell peacefully asleep while praying his breviary in preparation for offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the morning. In the wake of the news of Cardinal Meisner’s death, Dr.…
In the wake of the sudden and sad death of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has just revealed in a new 5 July interview that he spoke with Cardinal Meisner the night before he died. As the Passauer Neue Presse reports: Müller had…
Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Germany, one of the four stalwart cardinals who authored and signed their name to the dubia, has passed on to his eternal reward. He did not live to see the dubia answered. He did not, in fact, even live to see his request for an audience with Pope Francis to discuss the matter dignified with a…
This past week has been incredibly busy for Church news. There is a definitive sense that the Francis agenda has shifted, once again, into a higher gear. We didn’t have the time to cover all the stories of relevance over the past week, so here’s a top-level recap of what’s been happening, sorted by day.…
Two years ago, when this story came out, I asked some friends and fellow journalists, “Is this the trigger-pull on Pell?” At the time, of course, his name wasn’t even being mentioned. But as the events unfolded that would later be referred to as “Vatileaks II,” media reports of new allegations of financial mismanagement at the Vatican left…
Rumors of Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s impending departure as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are nothing new. But last week, a new story hit the radar, largely-unnoticed in the English-speaking world. The Argentinian newspaper Clarín ran a report saying that Pope Francis planned to take advantage of the looming July 2 deadline on Müller’s five-year mandate…
Earlier today, a letter emerged on Settimo cielo, the blog of Sandro Magister. It is claimed to have been written by Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the four so-called Dubia Cardinals, on behalf of all four of those prelates who had requested clarity from the pope on specific points of confusion arising from the post-synodal apostolic exhortation…
Bishop Stephan Ackermann of the Diocese of Trier, in Germany, has announced that the diocese will be closing almost all of its parishes. From Gloria.tv: Trier diocese, the oldest in Germany, will dissolve its 903 parishes and reduce them to 35, liberal Bishop Stephan Ackermann (54) explained on Friday during an information meeting of the…
On May 17th, Maike Hickson reported a rather shocking revelation from Italian journalist and Vatican expert Marco Tosatti: In the Vatican, unconfirmed reports from good sources have leaked that the Pontiff is on the verge of appointing – or even might have already formed – a secret commission to examine and potentially study changes to…
