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[Catholic Caucus] Dissenters rip Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1986 letter on homosexuality on 40th anniversary October 30, 2026» Continue to this story on National Catholic Reporter CWN Editor's Note: Critics of Catholic teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts strongly criticized the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s letter to bishops on the pastoral care of homosexual persons, 40 years after its publication. At the time, the congregation’s prefect was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. “We were horrified when we read it, but I would say we were not surprised,” said Sister Jeannine Gramick, cofounder of...

Pope Leo meets with Chicago anti-ICE activists at Vatican Pope Leo met with Chicago auxiliary Bishop José Maldonado and members of the so-called Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a leftist, pro-immigration group. Following his weekly general audience on Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV met with clerical and lay activists for immigrants detained by ICE in his native Chicago.Following his October 28 audience, the American pontiff met with Bishop José María García Maldonado, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, and several priests and lay members of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership (CSPL), a group that specializes in “bringing pastoral care” to...

Two church non-profits have taken in at least $62 M to build the Somali community in Minnesota — leading to the rise of Ilhan Omar and the fraud scandals that have gripped that state. Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services were at the forefront of reshaping MN thanks to generous government contracts stemming back generations. “This is a very big pile of government money and a whole bunch of different groups have come to get their own slice of it,” Parker Thayer, an immigration expert at the Capital Research Center...total money pouring into MN resettlement programs is “in the hundreds...

Murr explains the unsettling Bugnini case: “Look, Your Holiness, you have a Freemason in charge of the new liturgy and all the sacraments” Of the two-hour conversation that Father Charles Theodore Murr held with Pedro Buerbaum on WORLDCA$T, which InfoVaticana already reported in its chronicle on the death of John Paul I, there is a passage that deserves separate reading. It is the one dedicated to Monsignor Annibale Bugnini, the Vincentian religious who designed the post-conciliar liturgical reform and who, according to the testimony of the former collaborator of Archbishop Édouard Gagnon, was the spark that ignited Paul VI’s major...

Pope Leo XIV underwent a procedure at Agostino Gemelli University Hospital in Rome to remove a small nodule on his lung Tuesday, the Vatican said. The 71-year-old pontiff underwent thoracic surgery to remove the lower lobe of his right lung and doctors confirmed he had lung adenocarcinoma, a form of lung cancer, according to a statement released by the Holy See Press Office. The diagnosis was confirmed through a tissue examination conducted during the operation, consistent with findings from preoperative tests, the Vatican said. The pope spent approximately three hours in the operating room, although the surgery itself lasted about...

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) President Archbishop Paul Coakley on Oct. 9 condemned the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan as a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” The statement comes shortly after the War Department confirmed plans to livestream the execution of Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting. Hasan, who described the attack as an act of jihad, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3 at Fort Hood. A military jury convicted him in 2013 and sentenced...

The harsh reality for France and French consumers is that three wars have squeezed France's energy supplies and surged its energy prices. First the Ukraine War cutting off oil and natural gas from Russia due to sanctions. Then the Iran War shutting down Persian Gulf oil and natural gas shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. And finally the Yemen War with Houthi forces in Yemen able to disrupt a major oil pipeline for almost two weeks vital to supplying France and Europe... This week a Frenchman accused of espionage was freed from prison in Azerbaijan. The release of Martin Ryan...

Priest says migrants who swarmed Spanish city are ‘saints’Prominent Spanish priest Fr. Ángel García said the Moroccan migrants who stormed Spain’s border are ‘not causing any disturbances’ and downplayed the death and destruction due to the surge.Father Ángel García, the founder of the Messengers of Peace, told reporters that the mass influx of migrants who illegally crossed into Spanish territory from Morocco last week are “saints.”Speaking to reporters following a meeting with the mayor-president of the small, autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta, García called the 50,000–60,000 migrants who rushed into the Spanish territory between July 30–31 “saints,” per Spanish media....

Priest in Cdl. Tobin’s diocese urges Church to ‘lift up LGBTQ people’ after celebrating ‘Pride Mass’Father Alexander Santora, pastor of Our Lady of Grace Church in Hoboken, New Jersey, ignored Catholic teaching on homosexuality while encouraging the Catholic Church to embrace 'pride.'Father Alexander M. Santora, the pastor of Our Lady of Grace Church in Hoboken, New Jersey, who recently celebrated the parish’s ninth annual blasphemous “Pride Mass,” wrote an article reflecting on how his parish has “lifted up” so-called “LGBT Catholics,” encouraging other parishes to follow suit.In a June 18 op-ed for the Daily Journal headlined “My church lifts up...

Priest attends brother’s homosexual ‘wedding,’ calls it ‘amazing,’ ‘special’Fr. Rico Passero, the pastor of a Catholic church in Ontario, said that he ‘MC’d the reception’ and praised what he called ‘an EPIC wedding weekend.’A Canadian Catholic priest from Ontario posted on social media that he attended his brother’s homosexual “wedding,” which he described as “amazing” and “EPIC.”Fr. Rico Passero, who is listed as the pastor at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Grimsby, Ontario, made the Facebook post.“What an EPIC wedding weekend last week. It took me some time to finally receive some amazing photos from the Midnight in Eden wedding...

After the SSPX Excommunication: Which Catholic Truths Does Cardinal Tucho Want Catholics to Deny?The Vatican has punished the SSPX—but for what, exactly? If Catholics may not "formally adhere" to the Society's doctrine, then the obvious question follows: Which doctrines? This analysis walks through the most controversial points of the SSPX's 154-point Profession of Faith and asks whether Rome is now condemning truths Catholics have always been required to believe.Our Catholic Faith does not permit us to compromise revealed truth—no matter who commands us to do so.Tweet this quoteUnsurprisingly, even the secular press has reported on the punishments issued by Cardinal...

Wow! I'm Excommunicated By My Papa...or Am I?This photo says it all. My mom always said, "Birds of a feather flock together." So here we have the scandalous porn-writing head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith sharing an intimate moment with the pope, il papa, my daddy in the spiritual life. I'm heartbroken and shaking my head after reading the explanatory note from Fernandez. [Published at the end.]Will I stop going to the SSPX? No. My conscience tells me that in order to be in "full Communion" with Rome these days, I must accept those things I...

Pope Leo XIV remains widely popular among U.S. Catholics, but a new survey suggests partisan divisions are beginning to shape views of the pontiff. A Pew Research Center survey found 78 percent of Catholics view Leo favorably, down from 84 percent last year. The decline was driven largely by Republican Catholics and less-frequent churchgoers. The survey follows a period of public tension between Pope Leo and President Donald Trump. In April, the pontiff spoke out against war, warning that it was driven by unnamed leaders gripped by a "delusion of omnipotence." Trump later responded with a series of social media...

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., removed an archdiocesan exorcist and severed ties with his nonprofit organization on Wednesday after he went viral earlier this week for expressing his opinion that most UFO encounters are likely demonic. Monsignor Stephen J. Rossetti, a psychologist and priest of the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, who served as an exorcist in the Washington archdiocese for 19 years, was removed by Cardinal Robert McElroy for "linking UFOs to demonic presence," according to a statement from the archdiocese. McElroy, who has faced scrutiny and criticism for his own views on Catholic social teachings and...

[Catholic Caucus] Homosexual German priest says Bible should be read through ‘queer’ lens'Reading the Bible from a queer perspective essentially means approaching the texts as a source of liberation for all ways of life,' wrote Father Burkhard Hose.An openly homosexual German priest, who enjoys the support of his local bishop, has said that the Bible should be read through a “queer” lens.Father Burkhard Hose, a well-known pro-LGBT activist within the Catholic Church in Germany, wrote an essay in which he laid out what it means to read Holy Scripture through a “queer” lens.“Reading the Bible from a queer perspective essentially...

About a dozen years ago, having wandered for decades, I returned to the Catholic Church into which I was, as an infant, baptized in 1959. Therein lies my proprietary interest. I’ve long found Fox News host Sean Hannity to be a voice of common sense, when most in the political media sphere reliably tote woke Democrats’ water. But I wholeheartedly disagree with lifelong Catholic Sean’s April decision to leave our Church (while remaining Christian). He cited current officials hiding wrongdoings and their pursuit of popularity over traditional doctrine as causal factors. “I left the Catholic Church in large part due...

Copilot said Here’s a clear, scholarly, and surprisingly fascinating look at the little word “is” in the New Testament — and whether the Greek ever means “represents.” No tools were needed here; this is straight linguistic and exegetical analysis. 6. The Conclusion When you synthesize these passages, the result is unmistakable: • Jesus teaches a literal Eucharist (John 6). • Jesus gives a literal Eucharist (John 13). • Paul interprets a literal Eucharist (1 Cor 10–11). • The early Church universally accepts a literal Eucharist.The symbolic only interpretation simply does not fit the grammar, the narrative, the theology, or the...

New data shows 18%, or nearly 1 in 5, of tested students and staff at Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco were diagnosed with either latent or active tuberculosis during an outbreak that started in November. New testing is scheduled to start today. In total, 96% of the school community was tested, seven people were diagnosed with active cases during the course of the outbreak and 241 latent cases were reported, according to data released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health on April 27 to the school community. In February, four active cases and three suspected active...

In 1955, Algeria had over 1 million Catholics and 140,000 Jews. Today, as Pope Leo visits Algeria, there are some 8,000 Catholics in Algeria and there are fewer than 200 Jews.99% of the population of what was one of the old territories of Christianity are Sunni Muslims.Was Islam so popular that all the Christians and Jews decided to convert? Not at all. They were persecuted, murdered, tortured and driven out by Islamic violence that occurred in our lifetimes.Christians and Jews had lived in Algeria since Roman times. Now they’re gone.This Christian genocide was endorsed by major world powers, aided and...

A majority of U.S. Catholic voters supported Donald Trump in his 2024 presidential victory. Yet across the broad Catholic political spectrum – even among conservative-leaning bishops – there is dismay over Trump’s unprecedented verbal assault on Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead their church. Leo says he is sharing a Gospel message and not directly attacking Trump or anyone else with his appeals for peace and criticism of attitudes fueling the war. Criticism of Trump came from Archbishop Paul Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and from Minnesota-based Bishop Robert Barron, who only a few...