The McCarrick Report is released (The New York Times) The Vatican on Tuesday released a highly anticipated report investigating how the disgraced former prelate Theodore E. McCarrick rose through the Roman Catholic hierarchy to become one of America’s most powerful cardinals, despite longstanding allegations of sexual misconduct that ultimately led to his downfall…[Read the full report here.]
Leading German bishop renews call for intercommunion (CNA) Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops’ conference, reaffirmed Sunday his view that intercommunion with Protestants should be possible, despite Vatican objections. He made the comment in a Nov. 8 message to the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). “The community in faith, which is already ecumenically visible in many ways, aims at a unity that will also be able to be experienced as a communion in the Eucharistic and the Lord’s Supper,” Bätzing wrote in the message…
Pope kisses hand of missionary priest freed from captivity (CNA) Pope Francis met Monday with an Italian Catholic missionary priest who was freed last month in Mali after he was kidnapped from his parish in Niger in 2018. Speaking to Vatican News, the 59-year-old priest said that when greeting him, the pope not only shook his hand, but also kissed it. “I was not expecting [the gesture],” Fr. Pierluigi Maccalli said…
Catholic family fights to win back child-bride daughter in Pakistan (UCANews.com) Rita Masih cries at the doorsteps of Trinity Church in Karachi for her daughter who was allegedly abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and married off to a 44-year-old Muslim man. “Just give back my daughter,” she says in tears, referring to Arzoo Raja, who appeared on Nov. 9 before Sindh High Court where she insisted that she had married Ali Azhar of her own free will and that she was 18 years old. However, the court ordered action against the child marriage after a medical board confirmed the claims of her parents that she is only 13…
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks dies, an “eloquent spokesman for humanity” (Vatican News) The former Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth, Lord Jonathan Sacks, died Saturday morning at the age of 72, after being diagnosed with cancer nearly a month earlier. Lord Sacks was born in London on 8 March 1948 and lead the British Orthodox Jewish community from 1991 to 2013. He was known as a prolific writer on key issues of our times, including secularism, individualism and religion. His fame reached well beyond the Jewish community in Britain and in 2016 Lord Sacks was awarded the “Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities”. In a message, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, President of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW), paid tribute to a man he describes as “a friend” and “an eloquent proponent of some of the greatest truths of humanity…”
