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Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama speak during a private audience at athe Vatican, March 27, 2014. Credit: ANSA/OSSERVATORE ROMANO. Vatican City, Mar 27, 2014 / 11:49 am (CNA/EWTN News).- U.S. President Barack Obama’s March 27 meeting with Pope Francis comes at a time of tension between his administration and the Church over religious liberty, several Catholic leaders have said. “There has been a great deal of acrimony over issues related to religious freedom. This is something new and quite serious, since it affects the ability of the Church to carry out its mission,” V. Bradley Lewis, a philosophy...

  March 27, 2014, Thursday – Francis and President Obama  "The two were scheduled to meet for just half an hour, but their private discussion lasted 52 minutes. At the end, they exchanged gifts, with the Pope offering Obama two medallions and a copy of his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel [Evangelii Gaudium]. 'You know, I actually will probably read this when I'm in the Oval Office, when I am deeply frustrated, and I am sure it will give me strength and will calm me down,' Obama said. 'I hope," the Pope responded."   — Associated Press report...

Official debrief following the return of Lady M’s China entourage: “It turned out to be a somewhat more substantive swing through this massive country than expected, displaying Obama’s deft ability to mix diplomacy with her personal narrative. Before flying home late Wednesday afternoon, she had raised the issues of minority rights, Internet access and religious freedom, all while charming the Chinese public by skipping rope, practicing tai chi with high school students and declaring herself awed by the nation’s ancient tourist sites.” In other words: an awesome piece of soft diplomacy success, according to the Washington Post, as well as...

The use of wood from Baltimore’s basilica to construct a “seed chest” given to Pope Francis by President Barack Obama March 27 points to the history of American Catholicism and Baltimore’s role in it, said Monsignor Arthur Valenzano, rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. “I’m very pleased,” Monsignor Valenzano said of the gift. “It gives us another chance to get the word out nationally, and now internationally, about the role that the basilica played and continues to play in the United States.” Robert S. Reier, the basilica’s operations manager, collected...

Both England’s Tablet and the United States’ Commonweal incited debate last week with their accounts of an exclusive interview Archbishop Georg Gänswein granted the German television network ZDF. While the Tablet took more editorial liberties than Commonweal, Commonweal signaled tacit approval of the Tablet’s editorial stance.The bottom line: Gänswein’s interview indicates the Prefect of the Papal Household has come “unbound,” that he doesn’t much care for his new boss; and so, it is time for him to go, according to the Tablet. Perhaps, he should pack his bags and vacate Rome.The first round of comments came from the Tablet’s...

The lone clerical abuse survivor nominated by Pope Francis to sit on the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors said the commission needs to achieve concrete change in order to “show other survivors that the church is going to get it right.” Marie Collins, who was abused by a chaplain as a sick 13-year-old at Crumlin hospital in Dublin in the 1960s, told Catholic News Service that many survivors will be watching the new Vatican commission “with interest, but many will have written it off as merely a PR exercise.” “Survivors will not be satisfied with more words...

President Barack Obama's policies “have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Cardinal Raymond Burke,head of the highest court at the Vatican, said in a recent interview. Cardinal Burke added that Obama wants to restrict religious freedom and force the individuals, outside of his or her place of worship,“to act against his rightly-formed conscience,even in the most serious of moral questions.”… “It is true that the policies of the president of the United States of America have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.” “Now...

Thousands of rare manuscripts until now accessible only to scholars at the Vatican will go online over the next four years, thanks to help from a Japanese information technology company. Officials of NTT DATA Corporation and the Vatican Library announced their joint project at a news conference March 20. The library, founded by Pope Nicholas V in the 15th century, preserves some 82,000 manuscripts dating back to the early centuries of Christianity. Among its treasures are an illustrated edition of the works of the Roman poet Virgil, produced around the year 400, and illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy by the...

On March 9, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, America’s foremost Catholic prelate, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and commented as follows on the “coming out” of a “gay” college football star: Good for him… I would have no sense of judgment on him…. God bless ya. I don’t think, look, the same Bible that tells us, that teaches us well about the virtues of chastity and the virtue of fidelity and marriage also tells us not to judge people. So I would say, “Bravo.” “No sense of judgment…. Bravo.” That is how a Prince of Church in the Year of Our...

In an earlier blog post, I made the point that the role of St. Peter and his successors is made remarkably clear in Matthew 16:18-19 and its immediate context: And I tell you, you are Peter (Gr.—petros—‘rock’), and on this rock (Gr.—petra—‘rock’) I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Jesus here promises infallible authority to Peter that...

(Reuters) - Pope Francis has played down the notion that he is a "superman" who will bring sweeping reforms to the Roman Catholic Church, stressing that its ban on contraception and opposition to gay marriage will remain in place.

Pope Francis stunned a live audience in St. Peter’s Square Sunday when he accidentally dropped the Italian equivalent of the F-bomb instead of a similar-sounding word he meant to use. “If each of us were to accumulate wealth not only for ourselves but to put at the service of others, in this f*** — in this case God’s providence would manifest itself in this gesture of solidarity,” he said. The pontiff apparently meant to use the word “caso,” which means “example” in Italian. Instead, he said “cazzo” — a simple mistake, but one that came along with wildly different context,...

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta residence in the Vatican this morning. In remarks following the readings of the day, the Holy Father focused on the beauty of marriage and warned that the Church must accompany – not condemn – those who experience failure in married life. He explained that Christ is the Bridegroom of the Church, and therefore you cannot understand one without the Other. The Holy Father also warned against giving in to the temptation to entertain “special pleading” in questions regarding marriage. The Pharisees, he noted, present Jesus with...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic Church needs to find a way to offer healing, strength and salvation to Catholics whose marriages have failed, who are committed to making a new union work and who long to do so within the church and with the grace of Communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper told the world's cardinals. Jesus' teaching on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage is clear, the retired German cardinal said, and it would harm individuals and the church to pretend otherwise. However, "after the shipwreck of sin, the shipwrecked person should not have a second boat at his or her...

The Vatican is sorting out all the final technical details before the Pope’s Facebook page goes public GIACOMO GALEAZZIvatican city Francis will soon have his very own profile on the world’s favourite social network. The Vatican is just working on some final technical aspects before the Pope’s Facebook page is made visible to the public. The Curia has told Vatican Insider that the process is in the final stages and the Vatican’s tech experts are working on the page. IT technicians are currently looking into ways to prevent offensive or inappropriate messages and other  material from being posted on the...

The founder of liberation theology, the Latin American-inspired Catholic theology advocating for the poor, received a hero’s welcome Tuesday at the Vatican as the once-criticized movement continues its rehabilitation under Pope Francis. The Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru was the surprise speaker Tuesday at a book launch featuring the head of the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller; one of Francis’ top advisers, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga; and the Vatican spokesman.

Pope Francis on Monday revolutionized the Vatican's scandal-plagued finances, inviting outside experts into a world often seen as murky and secretive and saying the church must use its wealth to help the poor. Francis, elected nearly a year ago with a mandate for reform, used a document known as a Motu Proprio - Latin for "by his own initiative" - to implement immediate changes including appointing an auditor-general. The document says the Church must see its possessions and financial assets in the "light of its mission to evangelize, with particular concern for the most needy". A new Secretariat for the...

CARDINAL Keith O’Brien is facing a new investigation by the Vatican and may face a “trial” under canon law which could lead to him losing his red hat. Three priests in the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh have asked Leo Cushley, the new archbishop, to pass on to the Holy See their written complaints which characterise O’Brien as a “sexual predator” who used his authority to compel them into “coercive” and “abusive” sexual relationships. The priests, whose accusations led to the cardinal’s enforced retirement and disgrace last February, appear determined to force Pope Francis to make a final judgment....

The Vatican announced an immediate end to new hires, wage-increases and overtime in an effort to cut costs and offset budget shortfalls. Pope Francis, with input from the Vatican’s central accounting office, also determined that volunteers could be used to help provide the labor needed to make up for the hiring freeze and eventual attrition. Cardinal-designate Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, sent a letter, dated Feb. 13, to the heads of all Vatican offices, institutions and agencies. He said the budget forecast for 2014 “necessitated the immediate adoption of some measures needed to contain” personnel costs. In its last...

ZAGREB - Alen Budaj, an associate of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has said that the coutries that are legal successors to the former Yugoslavia, Serbia in particular, must send a strong diplomatic protest to the Vatican over its intention declare Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac a saint. The Vatican has officially confirmed that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac will soon be declared a saint. Immediately upon the entering of the Germans in Zagreb, on April 10, 1941, Stepinac supported the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), which was declared a state by the Ustasha (Croatian fascist movement), and in 1945, he...