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A retired Italian bishop has taken issue with Pope Francis’ statement that Islam is not responsible for terrorist violence. “It is an ongoing assault by Islam on Christianity,” said Bishop Andrea Gemma, the former head of the Isernia-Venafro diocese. In an interview with La Fede Quotidiana, he said that he was “confused” and even “disoriented” by the Pope’s statements. “I would expect a more firm defense of Christians,” he said. “I would like a Pope more energetic in defense of our principles and our faith.” Bishop Gemma said that Pope Benedict XVI had made a “prophetic” critique of Islam in...

MIAMI SHORES, Florida, August 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — An investigation that began as a group of parents concerned with financial and personnel changes at their children’s parish school revealed that their priest violated archdiocesan policy by hiring someone with a criminal record who had also been arrested for prostitution, fired longtime school maintenance staff in order to hire his friends, and went on lavish vacations and outings with the man arrested for prostitution. A group of parishioners who call themselves Christifidelis (“Christ’s faithful” in Latin) at St. Rose of Lima parish became concerned with the sudden news that the religious...

Pope Francis greets Sister Carmen Sammut, president of the International Union of Superiors General, during an audience with the heads of women's religious orders in Paul VI hall at the Vatican May 12. During a question-and-answer session with members of the UISG, the pope said he was willing to establish a commission to study whether women could serve as deacons. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano) Today the Vatican announced the names of the members of a new commission established to study the question of women in the diaconate. In May, Pope Francis told a gathering of women religious community leaders that...

The Islamic State terror group has come out publicly to reject Pope Francis’ claims that the war being waged by Islamic terrorists is not religious in nature, assuring the pontiff that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah in the Qur’an.

The Gospel Message is neither conservative nor liberal but should be defined as “challenging," says Cardinal Christoph SchönbornAustrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn OP has acknowledged the existence of a fierce and organized opposition to Pope France, carried out in certain. Catholics circles. And he’s warned that it is fomenting considerable polarization within the Church. “We are currently witnessing intensive inner-church debates – not so much in Austria, but internationally – as there is quite evidently very strong, significant opposition to Pope Francis,” the 71-year-old cardinal told the Austrian daily Der Standard last week before heading to Krakow for World Youth Day...

Following up on comments made in May, Pope Francis has instituted a 12-member commission to study women and the diaconate. Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, SJ, the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, will serve as the commission’s president. Among the members of the commission are Father Robert Dodaro, president of the Patristic Institute Augustinianum; Sister Mary Melone, rector of the Pontifical University Antonianum; and Phyllis Zagano, a National Catholic Reporter columnist and author of several books on women and the diaconate. Istituzione della Commissione di Studio sul Diaconato delle donne (Holy See Press Office)

The Pope’s response to the violence unleashed by Islamic terrorists is not “do-goodery”. It is a “powerful and determined response”. The gesture of Muslims who decided to show their solidarity with Christians in the wake of the savage assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel, is "an innovative and important sign," says Bruno Forte, a theologian and archbishop of the Italian archdiocese of Chieti-Vasto. Before catching his flight from Krakow to Italy, after the World Youth Day celebrations, he spoke to Vatican Insider about the presence of Muslim faithful in churches. Yesterday, there were Muslims who attended mass in many churches to...

Denial is a river in Buenos Aires: "I don't think it is right to equate Islam with violence," he told journalists during his return from a trip to Poland [on July 31]. Pope Francis defended his decision not to name Islam when condemning the brutal jihadist murder of a Catholic priest in France in the latest of a string of recent attacks in Europe claimed by Islamic State (or Isil). "In almost every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. We have them too," he said. "If I have to talk about Islamic violence I have to talk...

In a shocking development the Illinois Conference of Catholic Bishops have declared themselves “neutral” on a controversial bill that would force pro-life medical professionals and pregnancy care centers to tell mothers about the “benefits” of abortion and give mothers information on where and how to end the life of her child in an abortion clinic. Pro-lifers have worked very hard to defeat SB 1564 since it was passed in May but the Illinois Bishops, by taking a “neutral” position, have essentially sided with Planned Parenthood and the Illinois abortion lobby in criminalizing any medical professional or care center worker who...

This fall members of the Satanic Temple will offer a series of clubs in U.S. public schools. The goal of these clubs, which cater to children as young as five, is to expose students to ideas about secularism and Satanism they may not have heard before. According to The Washington Post: [The Satanists] point out that Christian evangelical groups already have infiltrated the lives of America’s children through after-school religious programming in public schools, and they appear determined to give young students a choice: Jesus or Satan. “It’s critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues,...

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. The innocent don’t need such protection, but there aren’t any innocent people in this tale. Some years ago, I was living in a small, mid-western town populated mostly by people whose livelihood centered on agriculture. It was a typical one-parish town, with a Catholic church more than a hundred years old, quite beautiful from the outside, and sadly “renovated” on the inside. The high altar was gone, replaced by a heavy table, and facing the people a simple wooden cross sans corpus...

The Irish Independent may not be posted on FR, so click HERE for the full article.

The Pope spoke to reporters on the flight back to Rome from KrakówSpeaking to journalists aboard his return flight from Kraków, Poland, on Sunday, Pope Francis said that violence exists in all religions, including Catholicism, and it cannot be pinned to one single religion. “I do not like to speak of Islamic violence because everyday when I look through the papers, I see violence here in Italy,” the Pope told reporters. “And they are baptised Catholics. There are violent Catholics. If I speak of Islamic violence, I also have to speak of Catholic violence,” he added. Spending about 30 minutes...

BATON ROUGE - A win for the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Baton Rouge today in a legal case that centered around a church doctrine prohibiting a priest from revealing what is said inside a confessional. A state appeals court affirmed that Father Jeff Bayhi does not have to reveal any conversation between him and a woman who claims she was sexually abused by a now deceased parishioner. Rebecca Mayeux claimed in a lawsuit against the Church that she told Bayhi about the alleged behavior in 2008 and that those statements between the two should be included during...

KRAKOW, Poland, July 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The head of the Polish bishops conference says that in a private meeting this week Pope Francis held with the country’s bishops, he spoke of allowing local bishops conferences to make decisions about the controversial practice of giving Communion to those who are divorced and remarried. “The Holy Father says that general laws are very hard to enforce in each country, and so he speaks about decentralization,” Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki told reporters after a July 27 closed-door meeting with the Pope in Krakow. The pope had traveled to Poland for World Youth Day....

The diocese of San Jose is saying its LGBT ministry will not "elaborate" on Church teaching on "sexual morality, conscience, and personal sin," while claiming that gay people can't change their sexual orientation. The document "Guidelines for the Catholic LGBT Ministry Council" bears the name of Bp. Patrick J. McGrath and is the guide by which Catholic parishes are to deal with LGBT people. It maintains from the outset that the guidelines "do not presume any particular social or psychological analysis of sexuality in our society, except for a generally accepted premise that individuals do not choose and cannot change...

Czestochowa, Poland, Jul 28, 2016 / 04:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Those who embrace their own littleness become the “spokespersons” of God, Pope Francis said during Mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, celebrating the 1050 anniversary of Poland becoming a Christian nation. It was the first major event of the Pope's trip to the country for the 31st World Youth Day.“To be attracted by power, by grandeur, by appearances, is tragically human,” the pontiff said in his homily. “But to give oneself to others, eliminating distances, dwelling in littleness and living the reality of one’s everyday life:...

Despite some reports expecting Pope Francis to criticize Polish bishops on their approach to immigration and other issues at tonight’s meeting in Krakow, the atmosphere was “very warm” and the Pope listened to their concerns, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference has said. One of those concerns relates to ambiguous passages in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and the need for their clarification — a matter that the bishops raised with the Pope, according to sources. Speaking to reporters at the end of the Pope’s first day in Poland, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki said the issue of migrants and...

"The apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, issued by Pope Francis on March 19th 2016 and addressed to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, Christian married couples, and all the lay faithful, has caused grief and confusion to many Catholics on account of its apparent disagreement with a number of teachings of the Catholic Church on faith and morals. This situation poses a grave danger to souls.” So begins the 13-page document sent by an international group of Catholic theologians, pastors, historians, and scholars “to every one of the Cardinals and Patriarchs, of whom there are 218 living at present.” Though the document...

Announcement highlights tensions between Francis and Polish hierarchy after closed door meeting last night A senior bishop has said that the Church in Poland will refuse communion to divorced and remarried Catholics despite the landmark family document from Pope Francis which opened up the possibility. Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, said that giving communion could not be allowed following a period of pastoral discernment - something which Francis has advocated - adding that if remarried divorcees had a valid first marriage they cannot receive the eucharist. His remarks came just hours after the Pope’s arrival...