It isn’t every day the pope’s chief-of-staff testifies in a major legal proceeding. It’s an even rarer thing for the papal chief-of-staff to testify in proceedings conducted by a state other than the Vatican. That’s what happened last week, though, and it was a really big deal.

Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, sostituto of [...]

The appointment of Archbishop Georg Gänswein as nuncio to the Baltics closes a circle. Pope Francis had asked Benedict XVI’s former secretary to return to his diocese of Fribourg without assignment after announcing the termination of his role as prefect of the Papal Household. After a year and a half, Francis assigned Gänswein to [...]

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò faces trial for schism. The outspoken prelate was summoned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to examine the evidence against him on Thursday, 20 June 2024. The announcement was made by the former nuncio himself, who since 2018 has been the protagonist of a series of [...]

The presentation of the document “The Bishop of Rome” on June 13 was occasion for a a rare exercise in parrhesia (candor) when Cardinal Kurt Koch responded to a question about the ecumenical impact of Fiducia Supplicans. It was a reasonable question, since the Coptic Orthodox Church decided to suspend theological dialogue over the document.

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Between the end of this month and the beginning of August, there will be at least three financial documents from the Holy See:

• The annual report of the Financial Information and Supervision Authority
• The annual report of the Institute for Works of Religion
• The annual budget of the Administration [...]

There is no need to cry conspiracy, blame anti-Francis lobbies, or claim there’s work afoot to push for a conclave. The fact is, no one should be surprised that the Pope’s vulgar descriptor for the gay environment often found in Italian seminaries leaked from the new synod hall and made it before the broad [...]

Two events last week were particularly significant. One was the international conference on the hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Council, with the presence of the bishop of Shanghai, Shen Bin, unilaterally appointed by the Chinese government and only later recognized by Pope Francis. The other was Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez’s trip to Cairo, [...]

That papal diplomacy under Pope Francis has two speeds became evident once more when news broke of the arrival of the bishop of Shanghai, Joseph Shen Bin, in Rome. The bishop is in town to participate in an event to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Plenary Council of Chinese Catholics in Shanghai in [...]

For the solemnity of Corpus Domini, the Pope used to go to his cathedral archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. He celebrated Mass and then accompanied the Blessed Sacrament in an evocative procession that moved from the cathedral to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major. Pope Francis did this in the first years [...]

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, presented a book by Vatican expert Ignazio Ingrao on the “Five questions that agitate the Church” on April 24th. In his speech, he outlined Pope Francis’s reform efforts as a path that cannot be reversed, for which there should be a commensurate pastoral response everywhere, and ultimately [...]