Roman Catholicism
Popular Kenyan priest, suspended for rapping, hasn’t missed a beat with youth
By Tonny Onyulo — June 29, 2018
(RNS) — His rapping is drawing more youth to join the church. That, in turn, will have a positive impact on society, he said.
Vatican stalls German bishops’ plan to give Protestants Communion
By Christopher Lamb — June 11, 2018
ROME (RNS) – Disagreements between Catholic bishops in Germany about plans to give Communion to Protestants have spilled out into the wider Roman Catholic Church.
St. Paul archdiocese to pay $210M to clergy abuse victims
By Paul O'Donnell — May 31, 2018
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis announced a $210 million settlement Thursday with 450 victims of clergy sexual abuse as part of its plan for bankruptcy reorganization, making this the second-largest payout in the scandal that rocked the nation's Roman Catholic Church.
Pope laments ‘hemorrhaging’ of priests and nuns in Europe
By Paul O'Donnell — May 21, 2018
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis voiced alarm Monday at the 'hemorrhaging' of nuns and priests in Europe, saying many monasteries, convents and churches will close as fewer people are called to lives of religious service.
Case of Jewish boy taken by pope flares over doctored memoir
By Nicole Winfield — April 20, 2018
(AP) — It’s an incident that has stained the Vatican for 160 years: a 6-year-old Jewish boy taken from his family by papal police and brought to Rome to be raised Catholic after church authorities learned his housekeeper had secretly had him baptized.
San Diego bishop calls border wall prototypes ‘grotesque’
By Jack Jenkins — March 15, 2018
(RNS) — As President Trump traveled to San Diego to tour border wall prototypes, local Catholic Bishop Robert McElroy lambasted the project as a sure way to divide people and cultures.
The Pope, the Mafia, and the rest of us
By Martin E. Marty — September 19, 2017
So here we have the unquestioned leader of the largest religious organization/communion in the world, the Roman Catholic Church, taking on the presumably most powerful organizational embodiment of crime, at least in the Western world. Who noticed?
What the Catholic Church can learn from IBM
By Chris Lowney — July 6, 2017
(RNS) For one thing, that it needs an 'innovation jam.'
Callista Gingrich will soon be named ambassador to Vatican – reports
By Josephine McKenna — May 15, 2017
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Callista Gingrich, 51, is a Catholic and wife of the former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
Suicide among priests?
By Martin E. Marty — December 21, 2016
From the prosperous-appearing church of 1979 to the disappearing church of 2016, the Irish experience elicits responses on countless grounds.
Saint names dropped from 12 Midwest hospitals
By Lauren Markoe — September 7, 2016
(RNS) Goodbye, St. Anthony.
Who’s a heretic? Martin Luther, Pope Saint John Paul, Pope Benedict and Pope Francis
By Martin E. Marty — June 13, 2016
Popes have been interested in heresy and heretics for centuries, and language linking “papacy” and “heresy” continues to prosper down to our own day. The language root of “heresy” connects with “to choose,” and the heretic is someone who, in the eyes of someone else, makes bad choices. Those of us who are not of […]
Ecumenism of the barstool? Drunken Anglican vicar claims Vatican immunity
By David Gibson — June 3, 2016
(RNS) 'I’m from the Vatican, you’re f----d,' the Rev. Gareth Jones, a Church of England vicar, yelled at police who found him on a bender in London.
Henry VIII’s chapel hosts Catholic prayers for the first time in 450 years
By Trevor Grundy — February 10, 2016
CANTERBURY, England (RNS) The service was a symbolic act cementing growing ties between this country’s two leading Christian faiths, Catholicism and Anglicanism, divided since the Reformation.
Pope Francis, Kelly Gissendaner and ‘unchanging faith in a changing world’ (COMMENTARY)
By David P. Gushee — September 30, 2015
ATLANTA (RNS) Pope Francis and contemporary Roman Catholicism oppose the death penalty. This is a huge change from the past. How do religious traditions decide when doctrines should, or should not, be updated?
