ROME – Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, strongly defended Pope Pius XII’s wartime actions and said he had coordinated church efforts that saved the lives of many Jews. Cardinal Bertone spoke Jan. 24 at the presentation of the Italian translation of the book “The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust,” by...Read More

WASHINGTON - Cardinal-designate Donald W. Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, asked worshippers at an early morning Mass Oct. 20 to pray for him “as a bishop, a teacher, a servant of the church, now with this special tie to the Holy Father, linking all of us together in that great body of Christ.”Read More

WASHINGTON – Several Catholics were among nearly 40 U.S. religious leaders who called on President George W. Bush to launch a new Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative. “We ask that you make Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, in the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace initiative, an urgent priority for your administration,” the leaders said in a letter delivered to...Read More

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed six new saints, including an Australian nun and a Canadian brother, calling them “shining examples” of holiness and the power of prayer.Read More

ROME – Pope John Paul II consulted with top aides about possibly resigning in 2000 and set up a “specific procedure” for papal resignation, says a new book by the pope’s former secretary. The pope eventually decided that it was God’s will that he stay in office, despite the illness that left him more and...Read More

ROME – Julien Kenord, a Haitian Caritas worker, was shot and killed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Caritas Internationalis reported.Read More

VATICAN CITY – A recent sermon by the papal preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, took aim at John Lennon’s famous line, “Imagine there’s no heaven,” saying it represented an empty, secularized vision of human destiny. But an Italian biblicist, Father Carlo Buzzetti, has approached the question from a different angle: The modern church, he said,...Read More

ALBANY, N.Y. – It seems that the “bingo bubble” in many areas of the Albany Diocese has burst.Read More