From the team at Novena, to all our dear readers: a very happy, prosperous and blessed 2020 to you all.
“We are called to encounter others and to listen to their existence, to their cry for help. To listen is already an act of love!” The Pope has urged Catholics “to have time for others, to dialogue… [and] to witness with deeds more than with words the new life of the Gospel”: actions he called “truly a service of love that changes the reality” both of society and the Church.
Pope Francis constantly reminds us that the most important task is to proclaim the Gospel. 2019 saw him doing exactly that.
German and Austrian Christians are denouncing radical restrictions on the Church asylum system for refugees.
In a gay-friendly move, a French bishop has scrapped the words ‘father’ and ‘mother’ from baptismal registers in favour of gender-neutral terms for parental relationships.
The Irish Health Minister has blasted a parish’s anti-IVF message as an example of the Church’s “inappropriate interference in decisions that individuals and couples make about their own lives”.
Tens of thousands of Poles are petitioning the Pope to silence the “hateful voice” of controversial priest media tycoon Tadeusz Rydzyk.
The Irish Primate is defending the “prophet” Greta Thunberg as Polish bishops redouble their attacks on the Swedish anti-climate change campaigner.
“The Holy See fully supports Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Cardinal Secretary of State of Vatican Pietro Parolin said at the event held in Tbilisi City Assembly (Sakrebulo) yesterday (December 29).
“Catholic civilisation is that of the Good Samaritan”, the Pope has insisted in a message to the semi-official Vatican journal La Civiltà Cattolica.
The Vatican newspaper has implored Pope Francis “to break the wall of inequality between women and men in the Church”.
An alleged case of sexual harassment is rocking a Swiss diocese, hurting an auxiliary bishop tapped for promotion to another diocese of his own.
Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic signed bitterly contentious legislation on religion and faith into law on December 28.
The Roman poor have scored a win after a promise that the coins thrown in the Fontana di Trevi will come back to a Church charity.
For years, my husband would say after we returned from the church, “I thought the sermon was good.” To that, I would reply, “I didn’t hear the sermon, as usual.”
“The Holy Family is in solidarity with all families worldwide obliged into exile; it is in solidarity with all those constrained to abandon their land because of repression, violence and war”, Pope Francis said Sunday.
37,000 Spanish laypeople have denounced the Church’s “excessive clericalism” and “high degree of paternalism”.
The Bishop of Osnabrück in Germany is pushing for progress in the Church on the questions of women’s leadership, blessings for gay couples and optional priestly celibacy.
The Archbishop of Dublin has decried the rise in Ireland “of groups which are clearly populist and racist”.
Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral is “not out of danger” after the disastrous fire there this April, and there’s only a “50% chance” it will be saved, the monument’s rector has alerted.
A veteran Italian exorcist has blamed secularisation for a rise in what he has called “aggressive Satanism”.
A Polish archbishop has blasted Swedish anti-climate change icon Greta Thunberg as nothing short of the Antichrist for her defence of the environment.
The Montenegro parliament adopted on Friday a controversial religious bill which sparked public outrage.
Thousands of young people are currently converging on the Polish city of Wrocław for the 42nd European Meeting of Young People, sponsored by the Taizé Community, which is taking place from 28 December 2019 through 1 January 2020.
An Austrian theologian is pressing bishops to find more priests – married men and women – instead of closing and merging churches for lack of clerics.
A Vienna auxiliary bishop has spoken out in support of easing compulsory priestly celibacy. Driving the news Compulsory priestly celibacy…
On the situation of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, we in Europe “must be fiercely ashamed that we have not done anything to help”, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich has denounced.
A French-Spanish theologian has said that the Vatican financial scandals are signals of the “end of the pontifical monarchy”.
A French historian has warned that the Catholic sex abuse crisis will remain irresolvable without a challenge to Church sexism.
The address Pope Francis gave December 26, on the feast of St. Stephen, before and after praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square.