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There is one front page news story that will certainly not go unnoticed: that is, that the Pope is thinking about resigning during the Spring of 2012. Journalist Antonio Socci has confirmed the same in the Italian daily, Libero.  "For now,” Socci writes, “he is saying that this may be true (Joseph Ratzinger’s personal assumption), but I hope the story does not reach the news. But this rumor is circulating high up in the Vatican and therefore deserves close attention. The Pope has not rejected the possibility of his resignation when he turns 85 in April next year.”  Socci recalls...

<p>SINEAD O'Connor sparked widespread anger today after suggesting she would shoot the Pope.</p>

www.catholicnewsagency.com Europe doomed if conscience isn’t rediscovered, Pope says By David Kerr Zagreb, Croatia, Jun 4, 2011 / 02:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Europe is doomed if it doesn’t rediscover the true meaning of conscience, warned Pope Benedict XVI on the first day of his visit to Croatia. “If, in keeping with the prevailing modern idea, conscience is reduced to the subjective field to which religion and morality have been banished, then the crisis of the West has no remedy and Europe is destined to collapse in on itself,” the Pope told a gathering of members from Croatia’s civil society...

(ANSA) - Vatican City - Italian conductor Riccardo Muti is backing Pope Benedict XVI's drive to discourage guitar ''sing-songs'' from Catholic masses. The traditionalist German pontiff has called for an end to the use of pop-inspired religious music that many Catholic churches have used in different parts of the world to attract the faithful. ''It is possible to modernize holy music,'' he once said at a concert at the Sistine Chapel. ''But this cannot happen outside the great traditional path of the past, of Gregorian chants and sacred polyphonic choral music. ''(The Church supports) new expressive means (in music, as...

Bishop William M. Morris / Pope Benedict XVI Toowoomba, Australia, May 7, 2011 / 07:08 am (CNA).- Australian Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, removed from his post earlier this week by Pope Benedict XVI, is not going quietly into early retirement as agreed.And he does not appear to be respecting the usual protocols of confidentiality and discretion that Church leaders normally adhere to in cases of Church discipline. Instead, in a series of interviews this week, the ousted bishop has leaked what he claims is private correspondence from Pope Benedict XVI and compared the Vatican’s investigation of him to...

Pope Benedict XVI / Photo Credit: Mazur Vatican City, May 5, 2011 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI warned members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences that religious freedom is coming under a renewed attack, from forces he compared to the totalitarian powers of the twentieth century. The Pope observed that religious freedom was among the rights that underwent a “systematic denial by atheistic regimes of the twentieth century” such as Communism and Nazism. “Today,” he warned in an address made public May 4, “these basic human rights are again under threat from attitudes and ideologies...

POPE Benedict XVI has urged parents to use proper Christian names when naming their children.The Pope was believed to be speaking out against the trend of copying obscure celebrity baby names.Several Italian celebrities have fallen foul of religious tradition, most notably Formula One boss Flavio Briatore, whose son is called Falco, meaning Falcon.Christian names are an “indelible sign from the Holy Spirit” that help protect family life, the Pope said.Theologian Gianni Gennari said the Pope was “simply asking for seriousness when it comes to baptism”.

Kevin McKenna’s  review of 2010 in The Observer newspaper includes his assessment of Richard Dawkins behaviour during Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK:‘ The Pope’s visit was great but tinged with sadness because it reduced that once-great biologist Richard Dawkins to a rambling and wild-eyed madman hurling foam-flecked adolescent insults at the Roman holy man. I trust someone is giving the scientist his soup and caramelised biscuits as he recuperates. I even hear of a Richard Dawkins care fund. Could someone forward me the address?’Protect the Pope comment: Couldn’t agree more! It was a relief that the BBC cut away from...

A new Dark Age on the horizon?Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics... the vast majority of conservatives of every stripe would agree with this almost non-reported speech made by Pope Benedict XVI on 20 December, 2010.In a speech to Papal representatives from all over the world, the Pope spoke in the context of a the near total collapse in the Western world of any moral consensus rooted in Christian ethics and heritage.In comments aimed directly at the secularization and abandonment of God by the West, Benedict stunned those in a attendance when he stated; "Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy...

Pope Benedict XVI’s book-length interview is certain to spark global attention, and not only for his comments suggesting that condom use might be acceptable in some circumstances. In the 219-page book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times, the German Pontiff spoke candidly on the clerical sex abuse scandal, relations with Islam, papal resignation and the “threatening catastrophe” facing humanity. The wide-ranging interview was conducted by German writer Peter Seewald, who posed questions in six one-hour sessions last summer. The book was to be released tomorrow at the Vatican, but ample excerpts were...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Catholic Online) - Catholics, other Christians, other people of faith and people of good throughout the world continue to mourn and reflect upon the brutal killing of Catholics at Holy Mass in Baghdad last Sunday. However, those associated with the Muslim extremists who perpetrated the evil act continue to spew their hateful and violent rhetoric. We are committed to updating our global readers on the unfolding danger that these threats portend against Catholics and other Christians. Serious times demand a serious response. Asia News has provided excellent coverage of the massacre and its aftermath. On November 3, they...

The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI has received a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Vatican did not release the contents of the message. But the website of the Iranian presidency said Saturday that Ahmadinejad had called for cooperation by "divine religions" against secularism.

VATICAN CITY - Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict's number two on Wednesday for calling homosexuality a "pathology" and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children. The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers on Wednesday. The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal's remarks.

Gay rights groups have condemned the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for claiming that the Catholic church's sexual abuse crisis was linked to homosexuality and paedophilia and not celibacy among priests.Bertone, who is considered Pope Benedict's number two, sparked the controversy on a visit to Chile when he suggested gay sexuality was to blame for the church's child abuse scandals.Homosexual associations in Italy reacted with anger and indignation. The biggest group, Arcigay, called the cardinal's words "shocking and irresponsible". The president of the gay media service, Gaynet, said if senior church officials "feel constrained to dump the blame...

Having criticized particular Catholic cardinals for blaming everything–including the Church’s sex scandal–on “the Jews”, let me now come to the defense of the Pope and of the Church itself on this issue. To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse. The first tradition involves confidentiality, particularly not exclusively the confidentiality of the priest with regard to the penitent. But there is also a wider spread tradition of confidentiality within the Church hierarchy itself. Second, there...

...of laicizing two priests after lengthy canonical trials right in the middle of pushing to streamline a complex Vatican bureaucracy so as to facilitate more speedy outcomes. Per Fr. Z: •Again, the abuse took place decades ago.•He was suspended.•There was a canonical trial.It was referred to Rome, the CDF, because it concerned a case of the confessional. •It was determined that he should be dismissed from the clerical state.•The priest appealed.•The appeal process was drawn out for several years because the laws and canonical process of these clerical cases was being overhauled.•Card. Ratzinger was the one who led the...

LOS ANGELES – The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday. In the Aug. 27, 1963 letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders. The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request...

The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child’s mother—thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture. Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in...

Friday March 26, 2010 NYTimes vs. Pope Benedict: Paper Seeks to Implicate Pope in Abuse Cases Vatican told of one case when abuser priest was dying, over two decades after incidents occured By John JalsevacMarch 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The NYTimes has set its sights firmly on Pope Benedict in its front page coverage of the fallout of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, which has been reignited in recent weeks and months after revelations of abuse by priests and religious in Ireland and Germany. In recent days the U.S. paper has published a series of articles...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue criticizes an op-ed article and a news story in the New York Times about Pope Benedict XVI's role in the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy: In yesterday's Times, columnist Maureen Dowd said that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, "ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys." Wrong. Her own newspaper said it has no evidence that he even knew of letters that reached his office in 1996 about this matter. Today's edition of the Times has...