Head of German bishops calls for changes in Church (CNS) In a wide-ranging interview, the head of the German bishops’ conference called for far-reaching changes to the Catholic Church and criticized the Vatican’s treatment of the church in his country. “I would describe myself as conservative because I love this church and enjoy devoting my life and my strength to it. But I want it to change,” Limburg Bishop Georg Bätzing told the magazine Herder Korrespondenz. His remarks were reported by the German Catholic news agency KNA. Among other things, Bätzing suggested changing church teaching on LGBTQ rights. Bätzing also wants church blessings for couples who cannot marry in the Catholic Church…
Church bells to ring December 30 in honor of COVID-19 victims (CNS) Churches will ring bells at noon Dec. 30, during the octave of Christmas, to remember and honor the more than 336,000 people who have died in the United States from COVID-19. These bells will ring in churches in the Boston and New York Archdioceses and in the Brooklyn Diocese. It was unknown the day prior to this event if other dioceses would also participate in response to the invitation from Msgr. Joseph P. LaMorte, vicar general of the New York Archdiocese…
Man who killed Catholic patient for praying to be arraigned for murder (CNA) Jesse Martinez, a COVID-19 patient who beat a fellow patient to death with an oxygen tank at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, will be arraigned on December 31st for murder, elder abuse, and religion-motivated hate crime, authorities announced on December 28. The victim, David Hernandez-Garcia, an 82-year-old Catholic Latino man, was a resident of Lancaster, a suburb north of Los Angeles in California. He was being treated for a COVID-19 infection in a two-person room.
Christmas trees burned in front of two Israeli churches (CNS) The burning of two Christmas trees in the early morning of Dec. 26 in the northern Israeli Arab city of Sakhnine was carried out “intentionally and premeditatedly,” said the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land…
How the pandemic has hit children of low-income families (The New York Times) KaShawna Watson, who oversees the school-based mental health program for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, the city’s largest independent social service provider, said months of virtual learning, protests against police brutality and financial turmoil have taken a toll on young people in the Seventh and Eighth Wards. “They’re worried what will happen if they go outside,” she said. “Are they going to get shot because they’re Black? Or is their dad not going to come back home?” While those general worries are not new, she said, they have been worsened by the pandemic…
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