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 [...]

During the last meeting of the Council of Cardinals, decentralization was one of the issues on the table, and the possibility of giving more autonomy to bishops’ conferences on some topics was also discussed. Pope Francis loves to talk about the notion of synodality. But in the end, it is he alone [...]

Perhaps a way to look at Pope Francis’s pontificate lies in only one question: how to tackle the cultural shift of our times? This was the question at the base of the 2013 General Congregations – the pre-conclave meetings of cardinals – and it is likely at the base of Pope Francis’s entire pontificate.

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“April is the cruelest month,” Eliot said in his poem “The Wasteland”. Perhaps no one more than Benedict XVI understands this: he was born on a Holy Saturday in mid-April, baptized on the same day, and he turned 90 on April 16, Easter Sunday. It is the fourth year since he retired to [...]

Last week opened with an international congress celebrating the 50th anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio. The congress is not only noteworthy because of the quality of the interventions, which were characterized by an interdisciplinary approach. It is noteworthy also because the congress is the first one fully organized by the [...]