Powerful Vatican cardinal resigns amid scandal (AP) The powerful head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, resigned suddenly Thursday from the post and renounced his rights as a cardinal amid a financial scandal that has reportedly implicated him indirectly. The Vatican provided no details on why Pope Francis accepted Becciu’s resignation in a statement late Thursday. In the one-sentence announcement, the Holy See said only that Francis had accepted Becciu’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints “and his rights connected to the cardinalate…”
WV’s Bransfield: ‘I do not wish to do battle with my successor’ (CNA) Retired West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield told CNA Thursday that he is retired, wants to stay retired, and does not want to “do battle” with his successor, after Bishop Mark Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston called an apology from Bransfield, “self-serving” and “lacking in any contrition.”“I’m retired and I want to stay retired, and I do not wish to do battle with my successor, I really don’t,” Bransfield told CNA by telephone Sept. 24. “The problem is, when I start to comment, it gets into a battle,” Bransfield added…
The priest who is doing time in a Georgia jail (RNS) For more than 850 days, the Rev. Stephen Kelly, a Jesuit priest, has hunkered down in a south Georgia jail in relative obscurity. On April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination, Kelly and I cut a padlock on a perimeter fence gate at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, the Atlantic home port of the Trident submarine, located in St. Marys, Georgia…
JPII relic stolen (CNA) This week a relic of St. Pope John Paul II was stolen from a cathedral in central Italy, while a church in Sicily was also robbed and the Eucharist desecrated. A gold reliquary with a relic of the blood of St. John Paul II was discovered to be missing from a chapel of the Cathedral Basilica of Spoleto on the evening of Sept. 23, according to the Italian daily L’Avvenire…
Iraqi archbishop who saved ancient manuscripts nominated for EU prize (CNS) An Iraqi archbishop who helped save hundreds of ancient manuscripts from being destroyed by Islamic State militants was among the nominees for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize. In a statement released Sept. 17, the European Parliament announced that Chaldean Archbishop Najib Mikhael Moussa of Mosul was nominated for the 2020 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded annually “to honor exceptional individuals and organizations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms…”
