The appointment of Archbishop Luis Ladaria as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a further proof – if any proof were still needed – that Pope Francis’s appointments in the Curia reveal neither what he is really thinking nor who his friends are.

Archbishop Ladaria is held in [...]

Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence from his post as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. The announcement of the leave came just one week after the news broke that the Vatican’s General Auditor, Libero Milone, resigned. Though the two events might be linked and the connection between them [...]

During the days in which a letter to Pope Francis by the four cardinals of the dubia was disclosed, the Pope paid a half-day visit to pray on the tombs of Fr. Primo Mazzolari and Fr. Lorenzo Milani. The Pope thus paid homage to two priests, very much ahead of their times, [...]

The news of a commission to reinterpret Humanae Vitae – broken first by Vatican-watcher Marco Tosatti, and later by the website Corrispondenza Romana – is in fact part of a wider issue. This issue does not deal only with Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical, but, on a wider scale, it deals with the [...]

The bishops of Venezuela, who came last week to Rome to meet Pope Francis, trusted in the Holy See’s moral strength and its international influence. If the Pope – this is the rationale – were to speak out on the Venezuelan crisis, administrations and international institutions would understand that it is about time [...]

The publication of Benedict XVI’s foreword to the German Edition of the latest book written by Cardinal Robert Sarah generated a turmoil that, in some ways, recalls what the climate was like during his pontificate.

In the foreword, Benedict lauded Pope Francis’s choice to appoint Cardinal Sarah as Prefect of the Congregation for [...]

The Pontifical Council for Culture turned 35 years old on May 20. It is perhaps the only among Vatican dicasteries not to be involved in projects of reform. Yes, it was thought that it was going to be merged in a single department with the Secretariat for Communications, but that plan until now came [...]

The week that Pope Francis ended at the shrine at Fatima to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin began with the ad limina visit of the Quebec bishops. As if the mere presence of these Canadian bishops sought to underscore that, in the end, the prophecy of Fatima has not [...]

The Myanmar Minister for Foreign Affairs, Aung San Su Kyi, Nobel Prize laureate for peace, visited Pope Francis on May 4. The visit was aimed at finalizing the opening of diplomatic ties between the Holy See and Myanmar (Burma), one of the few countries that did not enjoy full diplomatic ties with the [...]