In January 2016, OnePeterFive reported on the Pontifical Mass in the old rite celebrated by Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong at the Asilo dela Medalla Milagrosa Chapel, during the International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) in Cebu City, Philippines. At that time, there was no regular Latin Mass in the Archdiocese of Cebu, the largest archdiocese in…
It’s been a rough year for the Catholic Church, with traditional Catholic teaching under constant attack, so I want to share some positive things I experienced in 2017. I traveled to two different places outside the United States that have been working to restore the traditional Latin Mass. In April of 2017, I was privileged…
Holiness is a topic about which ignorance abounds and concerning which not much Catholic ink is spilled. It’s also one of the most critical to understand if we’re to have a clear idea of what it means to be Christian. Holiness is typically taken as a synonym for moral goodness. However, this is only one…
Editor’s note: The following is an interview conducted by Italian journalist Lorenza Formicola with Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. As former head of the Vatican Bank, Tedeschi is one of the better -known signatories of the recently issued filial correction of Pope Francis. Lorenza Formicola: It’s been a few months since the “filial correction” was published, and confusion remains.…
With the news that Pope Francis might relax the rule of priestly celibacy in certain regions, there has been much celebration in certain quarters of the Catholic world. Many of those celebrating see celibacy primarily as a burden that forces unnecessary loneliness onto priests. What they fail to see is that such loneliness can have…
There is a hierarchy of language. This is true for secular politics and cultural commerce, as well as in terms of religion. In this hierarchy, some languages are higher than others. JRR Tolkien, a philologist at Oxford, was quite aware of this. In his fictional world, which we know through Lord of the Rings, the…
John Phillips of The Telegraph (UK) reported this morning that Pope Francis has now “placed a request for Roman Catholic priests to be allowed to marry in Brazil on the agenda of a forthcoming synod on the Amazon region”. Phillips, citing Vatican sources in the Italian paper Il Messaggero, says that the decision to put “a partial lifting…
In his Monday column at First Things, Italian journalist and veteran Vatican-watcher Marco Tosatti gave voice to what had previously been little more than a whispered rumor: that a group was at work, with Vatican knowledge and support, on a kind of interfaith liturgy: [T]here is the matter of the “Ecumenical Mass,” a liturgy designed…
According to the Austrian Catholic website Kath.net, Pope Francis is considering allowing the ordination of so-called viri probati. These “tested men” are said to have “proved their worth” by living virtuously in their marriages and in parish life, indicating a proposed relaxation of the requirement of celibacy in the priesthood for these men who would…
In a new open letter rebutting points made by Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments (CDW), pope Francis has made clear that he is not in agreement with the African cardinal’s commentary on his recent liturgical moto proprio, Magnum Principium. This public “calling out” of the cardinal responsible…
Image: a modified photo taken from House of Ilona, a UK-based clerical apparel store. We have become aware of a story — an anecdote published three years ago in a Swiss Capuchin journal and never denied by the Vatican — relating a conversation between the pope and an unnamed archbishop in which the pope is alleged…
