FRANCIS X. Rocca has met Pope Francis at least 15 times. That’s the number of international trips he has made as a member of the Vatican press corps aboard the Pontiff’s plane. “Every time we go on a papal trip he comes down the aisle and greets everyone, one by one,” Mr Rocca, the Vatican correspondent for The Wall Street ... Read More »
POPE Francis’s highly anticipated Apostolic Exhortation “Querida Amazonia” (Beloved Amazonia), released by the Vatican on February 12, has been described as a document “not just for a distant and alien part of the world, but has much to offer the Catholic Church in Australia”. “The Amazon is remote from us but the issues are not,” Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president ... Read More »
EXACTLY no one was surprised to read recent Oxfam data that Australia’s wealthiest one per cent had increased their share of wealth in 2019. Australia’s top one per cent, about 250,000 people, had captured more than double the wealth of the entire bottom 50 per cent, about 12.5 million people, the report stated. The report hit as Pope Francis sent ... Read More »
WHEN Pope Francis told young lovers in his apostolic exhortation on love to dance towards immense hope, he probably didn’t mean do the tango. But Ben Smith, the director of Life, Marriage and Family for Hobart archdiocese, thinks a dose of social dancing can be effective in teaching young people about the sanctity of marriage. That’s why he’s invited Katrina ... Read More »
JESUS Christ is central, Peruvian professor and member of the Ashaninka people Delio Siticonatzi Camaiteri said at a press briefing at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon on October 24. Professor Camaiteri was responding to a question about an Amazonian rite of the Catholic Church proposed at the synod. “Do we (want to) have our own rites? Yes, we ... Read More »
POPE Francis gave an apostolic blessing to Australian Catholic bishops visiting the Vatican, encouraging them to explore new ways of being missionaries. Pope Francis met with a group of 38 Australian bishops on June 24 for more than two hours as part of their Ad Limina Apostolorum visit, translated as “To the Threshold of the Apostles”. It was a high ... Read More »
CATHOLICS across south-east Queensland are being urged to take up the call of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, understand its teachings and support an urgent environmental action plan aimed at protecting the planet. Central to the plan is a commitment to “ecological conversion” in parishes, Church agencies and schools throughout Brisbane archdiocese. Ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, ... Read More »
BISHOPS in Australia have welcomed a sweeping new law ordering officials in the Church worldwide to report cases of clergy sexual abuse – and attempts to cover it up – to their superiors. Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said the law contained in a new papal document “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” (You are the Light of ... Read More »
POPE Francis recently urged representatives of the association of hairdressers, hairstylists and beauticians of Italy to avoid giving in to the temptation of gossip. He has spoken about gossip several times since his election to the papacy in 2013. In a 2018 general audience address, the Pope referred to gossip as a “form of terrorism”, and an act of war. ... Read More »
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