WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Twitter traffic about a report released April 24 on the future of religious progressives and a related panel discussion neatly encapsulated the underlying themes: -- "It's wrong that people can't earn enough to live with dignity in the richest nation on earth." -- "Both comm...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- From the moment Pope Francis said, "We declare and define Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II be saints" and "they are to be venerated as such by the whole church," their October feast days automatically could be celebrated at Masses around the world. St. John XXIII's feast d...
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When Boston Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley was asked at a news conference at the U.S.-Mexico border about how to persuade people to support comprehensive immigration reform, he pointed for an example to the Catholic Church's decades-long efforts to shift opinions about the death pena...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Too often people are fixated on material things, money, power or status -- none of which can give life and joy, Pope Francis said. Christians need to examine their lives with the question the angel asked the women who went to the tomb to anoint the body of the buried Jesus: "W...
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Q. I am a member of a faith-sharing group, which is ecumenical. Recently, a question came up with regard to "simony" and "buying a Mass." Please explain the concept of a stipend being offered for a Mass for a deceased person; non-Catholics (and Catholics, as well) find it confusing. Was not the val...
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  St. Pope John Paul II will probably be known in Church History as ‘the Great,” since so many people already attribute that title to him. He certainly would deserve it!   He was instrumental in bringing about the fall of European Communism, which had threatened the world̵...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jesus' resurrection "isn't the happy ending of a beautiful fairytale, it isn't the happy ending of a film," but is the result of the loving intervention of God, who wanted to give humanity hope and salvation, Pope Francis said. In the middle of Holy Week, Pope Francis encourag...
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Q. Why is it OK to eat fish on Fridays during Lent, but not other animals? Isn't fish meat as well? Is shellfish, like lobster and shrimp, considered fish, and does the church allow its consumption on meatless days? (It seems to me that lobster is extravagant and shouldn't be eaten during a season...
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WASHINGTON. (CNS) -- While many along the Eastern seaboard grumbled about the continuous snow this winter, Uruguayan singer-songwriter Luis Alfredo Diaz Britos saw an opportunity, instead of a reason to complain. While snowbound at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in Hyattsville, Md., Diaz B...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, the future pope dragged the hidden problem of human slavery into broad daylight. He held annual open-air Masses in the city's Constitution Square for and with victims of human trafficking -- many of them children accompanied by thei...
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