Cardinal Becciu’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints and from the prerogatives of a cardinal opened a Pandora’s box. Since the resignation, the media has reported every day about the Holy See’s mismanagement in finances, published interviews of people who had worked as financial intermediaries for the Holy [...]

When the late Israeli president Shimon Peres visited Pope Francis six years ago to promote the idea of a Parliament of World Religions, the Pope took his time to think about it. There was a risk to “secularize” religions and treat them as a political tool. Instead, Pope Francis liked the idea of [...]

We do not officially know the reason for Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s decision to renounce to his title of Cardinal and resign from the Congregation for the Cause of Saints. One could initially guess that the resignation is related to the acquisition of a luxury real estate property in London by the Vatican Secretariat [...]

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri is no longer the general secretary of the Synod of Bishops. He was replaced by Bishop Mario Grech, who had been appointed pro-secretary at the eve of the Special Synod on the Pan-Amazonian region. Cardinal Baldisseri’s exit is the beginning of a generational shift of the Roman Curia that will [...]

An encyclical, two book-length interviews, three key speeches by the Pope, will all be out soon. It seems that Pope Francis is eager to tell the world what he thinks, the way he sees the world, and how the world should operate in the post-pandemic era. In the upcoming months, we are going [...]

“I like to think that, somehow, the Synod has never ended. This time of welcoming, and the process we have lived through, challenges us to continue to walk together and put this experience into practice.” Pope Francis writes this in a personal note to the Jesuit-run magazine La Civiltà Cattolica. The editor of the [...]

The Permanent Council of the German Bishops’ Conference gathered Aug. 24 in Wurzburg. Among the issues to discuss, the instruction by the Congregation for the Clergy on the parishes, which many German bishops did not like. At the end of the meeting, the German Bishops’ Conference said that it would accept the invitation [...]

Pope Francis often says that crises must be turned into opportunities. This is one reason why the new series of Pope Francis’ catecheses during the general audiences on Wednesdays is dedicated to the social teaching of the Church in the time of the pandemic.

This is a significant choice. For Pope Francis, the pandemic [...]

To mark the 160th anniversary of the death of the curé of Ars St. John Mary Vianney, Pope Francis issued last year a letter addressed to all the priests. Read today, that letter also tells something about what Pope Francis is putting into action now.

At the beginning of the letter, Pope Francis [...]

Last week, Pope Francis appointed the layperson Máximino Caballero Ledo as general secretary of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, which is a sort of Vatican vice-minister for Finances. There are two ways to look at this decision.

The first: Pope Francis is carrying forward the “professionalization” of the Curia and picking laypeople [...]