Has France’s chronic decline in Christianity reached a low point? That trend now coexists with another dynamic: a second wind of religion among disaffiliated young people.
Tag: catholicism
A diocese in the UK found that many people lacked the confidence and faith to walk into a conventional church — so it decided to take the church to wherever people were.
From elephant ivory crucifixes to rhino horn handles for Muslim ceremonial daggers, sacred wildlife products fuel an overlooked driver of the illegal trade. This unbridled demand is pushing some species toward extinction, forcing faith leaders to reconcile devotion with biodiversity conservation.
Once a Muslim-majority nation, Kosovo is witnessing a quiet but growing movement of Albanians converting to Catholicism. Advocates of the shift argue they are reclaiming their ancestral faith, once suppressed under Ottoman rule. With deep historical roots and political implications, this trend is reshaping Kosovo’s religious and cultural identity — while also positioning it closer to Europe.
In an exclusive for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a bishop speaks to the journalist about why he offered money to a former altar boy who claimed to have been abused by a Catholic priest in the city of Bydgoszcz in Poland.
Led by young artists like Varsha and Sherin, Christian rap in India is emerging as a powerful genre used both for worship and protest. Gospel hip-hop, as it is also called, is gaining traction through social media and carving its own space in India’s spiritual and musical landscape.
Our Naples-based psychiatrist suggests replacing wishing-well prayers with something slightly more tangible — and edible.
Updated Oct. 10, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council on this day in 1962. What was Pope John XXIII’s significance in the Roman Catholic Church’s history? Pope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was the 261st Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, serving from 1958 until his death in […]
Updated October 4, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. The first Pope to visit the United States was Pope Paul VI happened on this day in 1965, and had significant political and religious implications. Who was Pope Paul VI? Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Montini, was the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1963 to […]
Year after year, the Camino trails leading to Santiago de Compostela have been setting new records for visitor numbers — and are now among France’s most popular walking routes. Behind this craze, a small ecosystem has grown up to serve today’s pilgrims.
“The gospel that is being preached on the pulpit these days is just meant to insult and belittle us,” says a Ugandan churchgoer.
In traditionally Catholic Ireland a different kind of clergy is emerging, one which is making weddings, funerals and other ceremonies more inclusive and personal.
Germany has been shaken by a study showing that sexual abuse has been widespread and systematic within the German Protestant Church, which has 19 million members. Now it is time for society to wake up to the fact that Protestantism is not superior to Catholicism when it comes to abuse.
Thanatology or the study of death has entered Italian academia, led by the University of Padua, which is taking an interdisciplinary approach to our fascination with mortality.
Majority-Catholic Poland has some of the strictest defamation laws of any democratic country, which includes laws defaming the Catholic Church. For many artists, this has meant years of legal trouble, including threats of jail time.
The synod had promised to bring forth revolutionary ides for both members of the LGBTQ and women within the Church. But looking at the first session’s conclusion reveals that hopes for change may have come too early.
Poland’s powerful Catholic Church is facing yet another crisis: following an exodus of parishioners, notably among younger Poles, now priests are leaving the clergy too.
As Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh are forced to flee their homes, is culture or corruption or something more sinister forcing a people to suffer so greatly a century after a genocide tried to wipe them out?
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If We Were All Conscientious Objectors
Our Naples-based psychiatrist imagines a world where all professionals could deny care on the basis of religious objection.
In this editorial for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, former Polish Senator, Solidarność activist, Member of Parliament, and Environmental Minister Antoni Tokarczuk examines what he calls the “true motivations” of ruling party Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, and warns against his use of the Church for his party’s gain, especially ahead of the upcoming Parliamentary elections.
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One Painting, Many Women
One patient tells our Naples-based Dottoré about trauma and aptly-named victims.
In his Spiritual Testament, Pope Benedict XVI only cited Protestant theologians – not a single Catholic thinker. Were the Catholics not interesting enough for him? And what do Joseph Ratzinger’s pre-modern understanding of the concept of reason and inaccurate Kant quotes have to do with it?
An agreement between the Vatican and Beijing was quietly renewed recently. However, China still views Catholicism with a mix of deep suspicion and general distraction. Meanwhile the faithful and pastors are caught between two very different worlds.
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What A Psychiatrist Leaves To Faith
Stefano keeps Jesus in his wallet. Before getting his monthly shot, he pulls him out and kisses him. Maria keeps him near her bed. Before turning off the lights, she asks him to make sure that her sleeping pills will work. Antonietta wears him around her neck. She says that when she has bad thoughts, […]
When the author’s father died suddenly two years ago in Colombia, the Catholic Church mourning rituals offered little comfort. Two weeks ago, by chance in Mexico City for the annual Día De Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations, she discovered how these ancient rituals for the departed could finally help her face the pain, and find true peace.
VATICAN CITY — While several Vatican buildings are embroiled in scandal, a few meters away from the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square the “Palazzo Migliori” is becoming a symbol of goodness and generosity. Pope Francis has effectively “donated” it to the poor. Various entrepreneurs were interested in acquiring it and transforming it into a five-star […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Father Jorge, dear Pope Francis, less than a month remains before your visit to Colombia. Before Sept. 6, you still have time to make your excuses and cancel. Believe me, you really needn’t expose yourself to a trip that wil inevitably be both a failure and a risk. Colombia is irredeemable. We […]
Francis has traveled the world and proven himself to be an able messenger of peace. But so far, he’s avoided his home country, where his unifying spirit is sorely needed.
The office of the bishop of Wurzburg recently received the rib of Saint Aquilinus. But why are the faithful obsessed with relics?
ДеÑÑ‚, Sept. 5 She had been dubbed “the saint of the gutters,” she will now be remembered as “Saint Teresa of Calcutta” after Pope Francis canonized the Catholic nun at a ceremony Sunday in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, had devoted her life to helping the poor in […]
LYON — In 2012, you could still catch sight of “yoyos” hanging from the jail cell windows. A yoyo, in French prison jargon, is a cord inmates throw through window bars to reach another cell and retrieve various objects. At the Saint-Paul and adjacent Saint-Joseph penitentiaries, in downtown Lyon, inmates could even get stuff from […]
A combination of political differences, bungling of protocol and lack of sensitivity seem to have further gnarled relations between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and fellow countryman Pope Francis.
Paris Match, Oct. 15, 2015 In an exclusive interview with glossy French magazine Paris Match conducted at his modest apartment in the Vatican, Pope Francis bemoaned greed and the “idolatry of money” that’s driving the world to ruin. The magazine, whose covers more commonly feature celebrities and royals, was invited to the Casa Santa Marta, […]
Since the gradual reduction of subsidies from Rome to diocese in the Democratic Republic of Congo, vicars have turned to the faithful to ensure survival of parish churches.
Leonardo Boff, a Catholic theologian and key figure of Liberation theology, was condemned for decades by the Vatican. Now, he says, the pope himself is going beyond Liberation teachings.
REGENSBURG — A day in the life of Sister Lydia: 4:45 a.m.: get up. 5:40 a.m.: prayer, 30 minutes. 6:15 a.m.: Divine Office, 30 minutes. 7 a.m.: Holy Mass. 7:45 a.m.: breakfast. 8 to 11 a.m.: work. 11 a.m.: Divine Office, 30 minutes. 11:30 a.m.: Lunch followed by kitchen work and rest. In the afternoon: […]
Designers in Poland are giving religious T-shirts and other products a hipster makeover, mixing pop culture with the Bible to create a uniquely 21st-century look.
CORDOBA — Back in 1984, UNESCO included Spain’s Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba on its World Heritage list. Thirty years later, the site that tourist guides describe as one of Andalusia’s architectural masterpieces — a symbol of the golden age of the Umayyad civilization and of the “concord” between religions — now represents conflict. Though the exceptional […]
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Waxy Ex-Votos
Fifty kilometers (30 miles) west of Barcelona stands the beautiful Santa Maria de Montserrat Benedictine abbey. Like many holy places, it features ex-votos, or offerings — but I had never seen such a profusion of wax body parts, most of them given as a gesture of gratitude for having been cured from a disease afflicting […]
-Analysis- VATICAN CITY — The pope who came from “almost the ends of the earth” continues to spread his message of hope, secure in the knowledge that the proclamation of the Gospel has much to offer men and women of our times. By no means should we believe that modernity will bring the end of […]