VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has decided the collection taken up at his Holy Thursday evening Mass will be used to help rebuild Haiti’s major seminary in Port-au-Prince. The seminary was reduced to rubble by the magnitude 7 quake that struck Jan. 12.Read More
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "Welcoming Christ in the Migrant" is the theme of the U.S. Catholic Church's National Migration Week Jan. 7-13. "I invite you to welcome Christ in the migrant through prayer, education and parish outreach," said Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif., chairman of the bishops' Committee on Migration. He said Jesus'...Read More
SAO PAULO, Brazil – Three clergymen in the Diocese of Penedo, Brazil, have been suspended from the priesthood while authorities continue investigating claims of sexual abuse against them from altar servers.Read More
A Baltimore-based Jewish foundation is pledging $3.5 million to Baltimore City Catholic schools in an effort to boost enrollment and attract even more financial support for urban-based Catholic education. In a Dec. 14 event at the Catholic Center in Baltimore, Cardinal William H. Keeler and Donn Weinberg of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced...Read More
We all face challenges in our lives. The most serious of those challenges sometimes results in a crisis of faith. It takes faith to pray and so the double jeopardy we face in such a crisis is an inability to pray. A feeling of abandonment, a feeling of loss, a feeling of hopelessness can follow...Read More
The year 2006 saw an acceleration of Pope Benedict XVI's pontificate, highlighted by publication of the pope's first encyclical, four foreign trips and important appointments at the Vatican and around the world. For what was supposed to be a pared-back papacy, it was a busy 12 months.Read More
ROME – Love, honesty and devotion to Christ are essential for facing the crisis in the church and in the priesthood caused by cases of clerical sexual abuse, an Australian archbishop said.Read More
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI does not have a foreign affairs advisory board, and he has not asked former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to become one of his advisers, the Vatican spokesman said.Read More
Oblate Sister of Providence Rita Michelle Proctor, principal of Mother Mary Lange Catholic School in northeast Baltimore, looked forward to the day when her school’s namesake, the foundress of her order, would be canonized in Rome.Read More
St. Agatho, born in Sicily, spent his early life as a married businessman. However, he found his calling and became a monk in Palermo, Sicily. Agatho became pope June 27, 678. He resolved the first dispute in which English bishops appealed to Rome. He also reunited Constantinople and Rome. St. Agatho died in Rome in...Read More
LIMA, Peru – Cleanup is beginning in towns on Chile’s central coast as electricity and telephone service is slowly restored and people try to rebuild their lives after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake killed nearly 800 people and caused millions of dollars in damage.Read More
St. Saturninus and his companions died as martyrs in Africa around the year 304. The emperor at the time ruled that Christians must give up the Scriptures to be destroyed, or they must die. However, St. Saturninus and his companions refused to renounce their faith. They were tortured and died.Read More