Just days into the papacy of Leo XIV, the new pope has begun to lay out his vision for how he will lead the Catholic church. Like his predecessor, he plans to embrace the poor and the marginalized. He wants to continue Francis’s effort to fling open the doors of the Vatican and listen to…
Even before Pope Francis was entombed in a Rome basilica on Saturday, conservative cardinals who felt his pontificate was a divisive disaster that endangered the church’s traditions had begun politicking to sway the conclave electing the next pope. They have a seductively simple slogan: unity. It is hard to imagine a less offensive rallying cry,…
Earlier this week, two top Vatican officials made a secret visit to see Pope Francis in the hospital. At first, the Vatican said it had no information about the meeting but then confirmed it, explaining the two prelates had come to secure the pope’s signature to move forward on assembling cardinals to approve new saints….
Roman Catholics worldwide prayed for Pope Francis, who is hospitalized in critical condition, at Mass on Sunday after the Vatican announced that he was “not out of danger.” The 88-year-old pontiff went into the hospital on Feb. 14 with an infection that developed into pneumonia in both lungs. He had a long “asthmatic respiratory crisis”…
The Rev. Richard Williamson, a priest affiliated with a breakaway Catholic sect who caused a scandal in the church over his antisemitic statements and Holocaust denial, and who was excommunicated twice by the Vatican, died on Wednesday in Margate, England. He was 84. His death, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, was confirmed by the schismatic…