The letter that Pope Francis addressed to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on March 14 is the epitome of the pontificate.

When the newspaper published the letter on March 18, it was immediately apparent that the Pope could not have written it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not all of the Pope’s [...]

The Holy See has denied that Pope Francis received Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda in the first week of his hospitalization at Gemelli. The news spread very quickly and created a lot of turbulence. The fear was that Pope Francis intended to change the rules of the Conclave, as had been rumored for some time. Then, [...]

Pope Francis’s first “proof of life” since entering the hospital on 14 February came this past week, in the form of a recorded audio message played for the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square on the evening of Thursday, 6 March, before the nightly Rosary for his health.

No photo of the Pope in [...]

As of this writing, Pope Francis is still in hospital. He’s had some ups and downs, and his prognosis is reserved, but the official reports have been saying he is at work as and when he can, and last week the Vatican even produced the receipts.

While Pope Francis was in the hospital, the [...]

Communication regarding Pope Francis’ hospitalization has been somewhat uneven in recent days. In the beginning, there was talk of a highly complex medical case involving a patient who was not responding to treatment or new therapies. Then, the Holy See Press Office officially spoke of bilateral pneumonia, which, in any case, was added to [...]

President Donald Trump’s decision to shut down the US Agency for International Development – USAID – or at least freeze it pending thorough scrutiny and reassessment has created great panic among many of the world’s NGOs counting on it.

According to a logic that began after the Second World War – remember the Marshall [...]

Pope Francis has confirmed Cardinals Giovanni Battista Re and Leonardo Sandri as Dean and Vice Dean, respectively, of the College of Cardinals. The news may appear at first blush to be of the housekeeping variety – and it is – but housekeeping can say a lot..

Re and Sandri have already turned 80, which [...]

Two recent events demonstrate that Pope Francis’s pontificate has lost all balance. They occurred in Latin America and also testify to the polarization and “war” that took place in the Latin American Church in the Seventies.

The two events are the suppression of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a lay association whose founder was convicted [...]

With the announced appointment of Sister Raffaella Petrini as governor of the Vatican City State starting in March, Pope Francis has made his primary intent clear. Faced with an attitude he summarily describes as: “It has always been done this way,” Pope Francis rather applies a personal approach, from which flow changes to both [...]

Pope Francis published his autobiography on Friday of this past week, to significant fanfare, at least from the Vatican side of the operation and certain obliging media outlets.

Titled Spera in Italian—Hope in English, to be read not as a noun but as a verb in the imperative mood—the book hit stores on January [...]