Pope Francis on Friday slammed both major U.S. presidential candidates as “against life,” because of Vice President Kamala Harris’s stance on abortion, and former President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration, but told Americans to choose the “lesser of two evils.”
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Pope Francis has appointed a priest who is a native of Tennessee to become the next Bishop of Knoxville.
“Pope Francis has appointed Reverend James Mark Beckman, as Bishop of Knoxville,” according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “Bishop-elect Beckman is a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, and currently serves as pastor of Saint Henry parish in Nashville, Tennessee. The appointment was publicized in Washington, D.C. on May 7, 2024, by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.”
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Christians around the world will commemorate the most important event in our faith’s history this Sunday, but the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t just important to those who believe a Nazarene who walked the earth 2,000 years ago is the Son of God. The secular world’s history also turns on this pivotal event, which inspired so much progress that we take for granted today.
Christianity turned the values of the Pagan Roman world upside-down. The Romans considered the early Christians subversives—many called them “atheists” because they didn’t worship any pagan gods—and put them to death for refusing to worship the emperor. After some emperors adopted the faith, Emperor Julian attempted to revive paganism, but lamented that the Christian ethic had transformed the empire.
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A Mass of Reparation was quietly held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan over the weekend after a depraved funeral service for a renowned transgender activist scandalized parishioners. Some Catholics, however, say that’s not enough and are calling for an exorcism to be performed at the cathedral.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has condemned the heavily attended February 15 funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a biological male who identified as a female.
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When I was a child, my parents and I would attend Christmas Eve Mass at St. John’s Catholic Church in Whitehall, Wisconsin. When we got home, my father and I would watch the replay of Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican on television. After watching the beautiful Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, we would say to each other, “One day, we’ll go there together!”
Sadly, my father and mother were never able to make the trip to the Vatican. However, as the former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, I was blessed to attend Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter’s on several occasions. And each time, I brought the memory of my parents with me.
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When Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann asked priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers in the German Diocese of Speyer to offer blessings for same-sex unions and remarried couples early last month, his letter made international news — and it should have. That’s because the Catholic Church believes same-sex unions are sinful and contrary to both the law of God and the laws of nature.
That teaching — that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is, in fact, a sin — has repeatedly put a Church hierarchy dedicated to “inclusion” and “solidarity” in a tight spot. Progressives both inside (men like Wiesemann and Fr. James Martin) and outside of the Church have repeatedly pressured Catholic leadership to offer some kind of legitimization to homosexual unions.
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Pope Francis is reportedly planning to remove an American conservative cardinal, who has been critical of the Vatican in the past, from his apartment over issues of “disunity,” according to ABC News.
Cardinal Raymond Burke, 75, was removed by the pope as the Vatican’s high court justice in 2014 and has been openly critical of Francis’ statements on LGBTQ issues and reform of the Catholic Church. Francis allegedly held a meeting with other Vatican leaders on Nov. 20 to discuss his plan to remove Burke’s apartment and salary as a retired cardinal because he is a source of “disunity,” according to ABC News, which cited two anonymous sources.
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In his four-out-of-four review of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the picture “transcends the genre of terror, horror, and the supernatural.” However, Ebert did not address perhaps the most compelling element of the 1973 classic horror film: that buried deep within the gruesome story of a demon-inhabited 12-year-old girl is one of the most authentically theological films ever made.
The protagonist of The Exorcist is not, as one might expect, either the possessed Regan MacNeil or her mother, Chris (each of whom take up a majority of the screen time). After all, neither of them complete a character arc during the film.
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A federal judge ruled Monday that the city of East Lansing, Michigan, cannot prohibit a local Catholic businessman from participating in a farmer’s market because it violates his faith beliefs to host same-sex weddings on his farm’s property.
In his opinion in Country Mill Farms, LLC v. City of East Lansing, Judge Paul Maloney of U.S. District Court Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, ruled, “The City has not established that the decision to deny CMF [Country Mill Farms] a vendor license is narrowly tailored to meet a compelling government interest.”
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Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) has fueled the ire of many Catholics for asserting the teachings of the Catholic faith justify her claim that Catholics may support and promote ending the lives of unborn babies.
“I am a Catholic—baptized, raised, and confirmed,” DeLauro tweeted. “The fundamental tenets of my faith compel me to defend a women’s right to access abortion. I am proudly part of the faithful large majority of US Catholics who support legal protections for abortion access.”
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A watchdog organization dedicated to the defense of the Catholic Church released a report Sunday that claims the largest Catholic health system in the United States is “acting directly against Catholic moral teaching in direct defiance of its Catholic identity.”
The shocking report, issued by the Lepanto Institute, alleges in its executive summary that CommonSpirit Health, with over 1,000 healthcare sites and 140 hospitals in 21 states, is “performing transgender surgeries, providing hormone-based transgender therapies, [and] providing puberty blockers to children under the auspices of so-called ‘gender-affirming care.’”
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A leading national Catholic advocacy group has responded further to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ announcement that the organization will move ahead with honoring an anti-Catholic hate group of self-described “queer and trans nuns” during its “pride night” game event in June.
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote told Fox & Friends Weekend Sunday the Dodgers “have decided to honor and celebrate a detestable, vile, and perverse anti-Catholic organization.”
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The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has released a statement condemning the Los Angeles Dodgers for reinviting the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” a self-described group of “queer and trans nuns” that puts on exhibitions that desecrate the Catholic faith.
The statement comes as Catholic leaders are organizing an effort to educate Los Angeles Catholics about the “sisters’” anti-Catholic bigotry and to urge a boycott of the Dodgers’ “pride night” game event at which the team plans to honor the group.
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For over a century, the Catholic Charities Bureau of Superior, Wis., has aided people of all faiths: the developmentally disabled, seniors, and children, many of them low income. As Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki recently noted, since the time of Jesus Christ, the Church has had “a mandate from Scripture to serve the poor.”
The state of Wisconsin disagrees. Its labor division has ruled that the charity is not eligible for a religious exemption from contributing to the state’s unemployment insurance system, because it offers its services free of proselytizing, regardless of clients’ religious background. As a result, Wisconsin’s Labor and Industry Review Commission determined it was essentially a secular organization, not operated for “primarily religious purposes.”
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On Thanksgiving Day, 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, a Hong Kong priest, was convicted, along with five others, of failing to register a defunct charitable organization that tried to help pro-democracy demonstrators targeted by the regime.
Ostensibly, the charges stemmed from the group’s failure to submit paperwork to authorities. But Chinese people of faith and governments around the world understood the real message Beijing was sending when it arrested Fr. Zen, known as “the conscience of Hong Kong,” last May. The purpose of the prosecution, said U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, was to show that China’s government “will pursue all means necessary to stifle dissent and undercut protective rights and freedoms.”
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The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent. American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects.
Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic — until it reached its logical ends of violent absurdity.
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A former student at Cardinal Carter Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, was cheered this week when he gave a passionate speech at a board meeting during which he urged the district to adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church to help all students rather than cave to the LGBTQ agenda during the upcoming “pride month.”
Myles Vosylius, 20, drew applause from parents and other citizens at a York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) meeting Tuesday as he shared his own conversion story related to his parents’ divorce while he was in high school.
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National Catholic advocacy organization CatholicVote filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit with Judicial Watch Thursday against the FBI and DOJ for failing to provide records requested under FOIA regarding the government’s targeting of Catholics.
CatholicVote President Brian Burch spoke to Fox & Friends Thursday about the lawsuit.
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Pennsylvania lawmakers on Tuesday took a corrective step in their effort to change state law to give adults who suffered sexual abuse as children more time to sue.
Current state policy gives underage victims of molestation or sexual assault a 12-year period to litigate against their perpetrators or those perpetrators’ institutions. House and Senate versions of a measure to give the would-be plaintiffs a new two-year window to file claims passed the House Judiciary Committee in early March but the panel took them up again this week. Some lawmakers insisted House rules called for a public hearing on the legislation, which the committee conducted two weeks ago, to precede voting.
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Revelations this week of FBI efforts to develop intelligence sources inside the Catholic Church elicited howls of protest — from Capitol Hill, the Church and an FBI whistleblower.
Amid the latest revelations of political bias and retaliation by the FBI, Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) is calling for the increasingly polarizing law enforcement agency to be purged of politicized personnel and possibly defunded.
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Spring is filled with myriad holy days for the Catholic Church. St. Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s feast days are widely celebrated, and the Solemnity of the Annunciation on March 25 gives another cause for celebration during the somber season of Lent. Soon after, Lent leads to Palm Sunday, which quickly gives way to the Paschal Triduum, the holiest days of the year. Then, at last, the joy of the Easter season begins.
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A leading national Catholic advocacy organization says it is prepared to file a lawsuit against the FBI for failing to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that seeks communications information related to a leaked document that revealed the bureau was targeting so-called “radical traditional Catholics.”
“On March 6th we filed a freedom of information act request with the FBI in Richmond, VA, asking for communications regarding the targeting of traditional Catholics,” stated CatholicVote in a tweet Tuesday. “Norms require the agency to respond within 20 business days, with an additional 10 for ‘unusual circumstances.’ To date we have not received any response.”
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For the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations, the Sunday before Easter marks the beginning of the most important week of the year – “Holy Week,” when Christians reflect on central mysteries of their faith: Christ’s Last Supper, crucifixion and resurrection from the dead.
Palm Sunday commemorates the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish holiday of Passover. According to the Christian Gospels, people lined the streets to greet him, waving palm branches and shouting words of praise.
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Pastor Brian Dulli sent a clear message to the congregants of his suburban Madison St. Patrick’s Catholic Church: Voting for a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate who stands for the killing of the unborn is perilous to your faith and soul.
Now, a leftwing group is threatening to get President Joe Biden’s IRS involved and go after the Diocese of Madison for “electioneering.”
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Bills in the states of Vermont, Delaware, and Washington would include in mandatory reporting laws information about child sexual abuse a priest learns during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a move the Catholic League states lacks sound reasoning.
Last week Catholic League President Bill Donohue warned the “seal of confession” is “under fire” in Vermont, noting the Catholic civil rights organization is once again “doing battle with lawmakers who want to violate” the priest-penitent privilege, mostly in legislation concerning the sexual abuse of minors.
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Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to face tough questions from Republican senators Wednesday regarding what many in the nation say has been the purposeful weaponization of the Department of Justice against parents of schoolchildren, Catholics who live their faith in the public square, and activists who fight for the vulnerable unborn.
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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega reportedly banned public church processions for Easter after comparing the Catholic church to the “mafia,” according to the Catholic News Agency (CNA).
Tensions between the government and the church have been rising due to Ortega orchestrating multiple investigations into church leaders and exiling others, according to CNA. Ortega has reportedly placed a ban on public religious demonstrations during Lent, Good Friday and Easter after he attacked the church during a speech memorializing the 89th anniversary of Nicaraguan national hero Augusto Sandino’s death, calling the Catholic church a “mafia organization” committing “grave crimes and horrors.”
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Pope Francis criticized attempts on both the left and the right to politicize the church in his weekly address at the Vatican Wednesday, according to remarks released by the Vatican.
Francis has been known for taking a more liberal approach to the papacy on issues of same-sex marriage, divorce and capitalism compared to his predecessor Benedict. The Pope said during his General Audience on Ash Wednesday that the church should not be run by any ideology and instead should focus on the Holy Spirit’s guidance, according to the Vatican.
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A dossier alleging Russian collusion funded by a Democrat presidential candidate. A suggestion that school parents were domestic terrorists from a left-leaning school board group. A list suggesting old-fashioned Catholics were extremists from a liberal watchdog on hate speech.
Three triggers for investigation. Three blunders that left America’s premier law enforcement agency reeling with a black eye.
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Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is releasing a book that accuses Pope Francis of giving “privileged status” to his friends that are accused of sexual abuse in the church, according to Catholic news website LaCroix International.
The Roman Catholic Church has suffered multiple sexual abuse scandals over the years after several reports from the Vatican found that the clergy, particularly in France, had abused thousands of victims. While Müller says that France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE) 2021 report was “inflated and exaggerated,” the cardinal claims in his new book, “In Good Faith: Religion in the 21st Century,” that Francis has helped protect those close to him by granting them a special “status,” citing the case of Argentine Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who was convicted in March 2022 of sexual abuse of two victims during seminary, as an example, according to LaCroix International.
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Pope Francis I said in an interview with the Associated Press that “homosexuality is not a crime” and encouraged bishops to stop practicing forms of conversion therapy.
Francis has come under scrutiny in the past for his statements regarding the LGBTQ community, including his perceived endorsement of same-sex civil unions in 2020. The pope stated during the interview that while homosexuality is considered a sin, it should not be a “crime.”
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Wednesday marked the start of this year’s National March for Life, the first since the right to an abortion was federally overruled in June of last year in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
In light of the impending Dobbs decision, Alcindor stated in May of last year that she was worried about “women who are poor, women of color [being] forced to have pregnancies that they cannot afford to terminate, and pregnancies that will then turn into children” if states ban abortion.
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American Catholic leaders are acclaiming the life and work of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose scholarly writings emphasized the unity of faith and reason and, most fundamentally, the primary truth of the Catholic faith, which teaches God is Love.
Benedict, who was born Joseph Ratzinger, died Saturday at the age of 95. He became pope in April 2005, following the death of Pope John Paul II, and served until his resignation in February 2013.
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A couple of months ago I was in a fascinating conversation with a Catholic colleague regarding the papacies of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, here in the ninth year of this curious era, 2013-22, when the world was living with, in effect, two popes of sorts, a reigning pope named Francis and a resigned pope — a “Pope Emeritus” — named Benedict XVI. We were wondering if the latter would, ironically, ultimately outlive the former, who few expected to have a papacy this long. When Francis’ papacy started in 2013, he was already known for poor health, which has progressively gotten worse.
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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who shaped Catholic doctrine for decades before surprising the church by resigning as pontiff, died Saturday at age 95, the Vatican announced.
“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican press secretary Matteo Bruni told media.
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Outspoken former papal ambassador to the United States Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò condemned the Holy See’s decision to laicize pro-life priest Father Frank Pavone, calling the action “unjust and illegitimate punishment,” and observed hypocrisy in the move while “the Roman Curia is infested with unpresentable characters who are notoriously corrupt and heretical sodomites and fornicators.”
“[A] person’s actions are consistent with who that person is, ”Viganò wrote at LifeSiteNews Thursday, and asserted that principle has been confirmed “in the canonical sanctions recently imposed by the Holy See on Father Frank A. Pavone, a well-known and appreciated pro-life priest, who for decades has been committed to the battle against the horrible crime of abortion.”
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Prominent international pro-life leader Father Frank Pavone said Monday Pope Francis “definitely signed off” on a letter that reportedly states the Vatican has laicized Pavone, for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.”
“I have received nothing,” Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life, told The Star News Network during a telephone interview Monday. “And what’s worse, that has been the pattern for the last 20 years of abuse by church authorities.”
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Catholics must “stay firm in the truth” as those who have embraced an LGBTQ agenda are in the midst of a “hostile takeover” of the Catholic Church, warned German Cardinal Gerhard Müller in interviews over the past week with both EWTN’s The World Over and LifeSiteNews.
Müller, the former head of the Vatican’s highest doctrinal office, is voicing his significant concerns about the dangers to the Church brought on during Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality, a process that involves collecting the views of lay Catholics in every diocese around the world prior to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2023.
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A Catholic church in Madison, Wisconsin, was vandalized over the weekend with anti-pro-life and anti-police graffiti.
Police are investigating the defacement of St. Bernard Catholic Church on Atwood Avenue in Madison, believing the spray-painted graffiti defacing the church’s front door and signage occurred overnight from Friday into Saturday, reported NBC15 WMTV News.
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A bishop has revoked the “Catholic” status of a Jesuit middle school in Worcester, Massachusetts, for defying his order to stop flying flags supporting the LGBTQ “pride” and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements.
“The Nativity School of Worcester is prohibited from this time forward from identifying itself as a ‘Catholic’ school and may no longer use the title ‘Catholic’ to describe itself,” Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester announced in a decree Thursday.
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A former apostolic nuncio, or papal ambassador, to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has warned Catholics that several of the bishops Pope Francis has recently elevated to the College of Cardinals support leftwing causes and oppose the Church’s traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass.
“Pope Francis has chosen his new cardinals for their ‘corruptibility,’” the outspoken Viganò wrote at LifeSiteNews last week.
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A Roman Catholic Church in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, New York, was desecrated over the weekend when its antique tabernacle was cut out of its metal casing, its consecrated hosts scattered indiscriminately about the altar, and the angel statues that flanked it beheaded.
The Diocese of Brooklyn called the desecration of St. Augustine Church “a brazen crime of disrespect and hate.”
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Wisconsin Bishops David Ricken of the diocese of Green Bay and Donald Hying of the diocese of Madison are among a growing number of Catholic bishops who have publicly expressed support for San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s declaration that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not be admitted to Holy Communion due to her continued “aggressive promotion of abortion.”
“I wish to express my strong support for Archbishop Cordileone’s decision stating he has publicly declared that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi not be admitted to Holy Communion,” Ricken posted to Twitter following Cordileone’s notification to Pelosi that she is not to present herself for Holy Communion.
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A woman dressed in a white bathing suit, stuffed in the front to make her appear pregnant, and with dolls hanging from it, ranted outside Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City Saturday, shouting, “I’m killiing the motherf***ing babies!” and “God killed his kid, why can’t I kill mine?”
The woman danced around outside the church in the rain, then complained, “My babies are all wet,” Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote at National Review, referring to this scene as “the most disturbing” of the pro-abortion protest that followed a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion on a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.
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The pope has named a new auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Cleveland.
“Pope Francis has appointed the Rev. Michael G. Woost as auxiliary bishop of Cleveland,” according to the Diocese. “Bishop-elect Woost is a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland and currently serves as a member of the faculty of Saint Mary Seminary. In addition, he was recently appointed as the interim director of the diocesan Office for Worship. Bishop-elect Woost will be ordained to the episcopate during Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Thursday, August 4, 2022.”
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In the wake of a leaked draft opinion from a Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, a Catholic church and school in Michigan has been vandalized with vulgar graffiti.
Activist Dave Reilly shared photos of the destruction of Saint Joseph’s Church and Academy in Armada on his Twitter account Friday.
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CatholicVote issued a statement Thursday that calls upon President Joe Biden and other officials to publicly condemn the pro-abortion group “Ruth Sent Us” for organizing protests that urge people to target Catholic churches and disrupt Mass and outside the homes of the Supreme Court Justices this coming weekend.
“In the wake of the shameless leak of a draft opinion of the Supreme Court, pro-abortion groups are now threatening to disrupt Catholic churches and to protest outside the homes of Supreme Court justices this Sunday,” CatholicVote President Brian Burch said in the statement.
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Wisconsin’s attorney general said his investigation into clergy sex abuse across the state has resulted in 1,000 calls to his tipline, 204 reports, and one criminal case. But there are some questions the AG is not answering.
Kaul launched his investigation into the Catholic Church in Wisconsin one year ago. On Tuesday, he provided an update on his progress.
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When we last checked in with U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), evidence of his misuse of campaign funds had been referred to the House Ethics Committee by the Office of Congressional Ethics.
As American Greatness has reported, Mooney’s congressional campaign used campaign money to pay for the congressman’s personal expenses, including $3,475 in meals from Chick-fil-A and other fast-food restaurants, two vacation trips to resorts in West Virginia, and $17,250 in gift card purchases from a Catholic Church gift shop. He has repaid more than $12,000 of a disputed $40,115 as a result of the OCE investigation.
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Members of France’s Catholic Church sexually abused 330,000 children over the past 70 years, according to a new report on abuses in the country’s Catholic Church.
The 2,500-page report is France’s first real documentation of the abuse, the Associated Press reported, and is based on research by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research.
“The Catholic Church is the place where the prevalence of sexual violence is at its highest, other than in family and friend circles,” the report said, according to CNN.
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