While the meeting between Pope Francis and Grand Imam of al Azhar is being prepared – the meeting will re-open a dialogue with Sunni Islam – we should ask ourselves what is Pope Francis’ diplomatic model, beyond the slogan of the culture of the encounter? Certainly, Pope Francis’ “pastoral visits” to Lampedusa and [...]

In a nutshell, what happened last week probably represents well Pope Francis’ Pontificate. Meeting with the General Union of Superiors General, that is, the plenary assembly of more than 800 leaders of religious sisters from all over the world, Pope Francis held a Q & A session. The sisters posed five questions, and [...]

A Europe made of bridges, not of walls. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, described this way Pope Francis’ idea of Europe at the eve of the Charlemagne Prize Award Ceremony in honor of the Pope. Since 1950, the prize is conferred to a person who has promoted European integration. Pope [...]

The Financial Intelligence Authority is the Vatican’s financial watchdog. Its annual report, released April 28, is one of the many proofs that the “hidden Vatican” has been continually working within the Vatican. Here’s why.

The figures of the report showed that suspicious transactions tripled in the course of the last year; that [...]

News of the suspension of the agreement with Price Waterhouse Cooper (= PwC) for the external auditing of Vatican accounts came out like an earthquake to strike the idyllic picture of Pope Francis’ reforms. The hiring of the international firm as external auditor was announced December 5, 2015 from Cardinal George [...]

What does Pope Francis really have in mind? The best response is probably found in a paper, published in the latest issue of the Italian magazine Il Mulino. The paper is titled “A Populist Pope”, and it is authored by Loris Zanatta, professor of the history of Latin America at the University of [...]

Conclusions were expected. But, instead, Amoris Laetitia – Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation, published finally after two years of a synodal journey concerning the family – leaves everything open. Even the thorny issue of access to sacramental Communion for the civilly divorced and remarried is left open. The Pope introduces the issue [...]

There is a red line linking the two events that will characterize this upcoming week in the Vatican: it is Truth. Both the so-called Vatileaks 2 trial and the presentation of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (that will take place, respectively, April 6 and 8) deal with the veracity of the information disseminated, [...]

Churches in Brussels lean out toward the sky, as if they want to fill up the distance between God and man. This distance has been deepened during these last years, as secularization has seized Belgian society. After March 22, Pope Francis twice stigmatized the “blind violence” of Islamic fundamentalists, and during the [...]