While Italy is locked down because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Holy See has nevertheless continued to work, though with less staff on site. Also, Pope Francis has kept seeing regularly the heads of dicasteries, according to the so-called “udienze di tabella” (pre-scheduled and recurrent according to a fix cycle). The life of the [...]

On March 15, Pope Francis made one of his usual big gestures: while the city of Rome is locked down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pope went to the St. Mary the Major Basilica and then to the church of St. Marcello al Corso. In St. Marcello, there is a cross that saved [...]

The seventh anniversary of Pope Francis’ pontificate was celebrated in a surreal scenario. There are no public masses because of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the Diocese of Rome even got to the point to order to shut down the Churches, and then reconsidered the decision. Pope Francis was compelled to pray the Sunday Angelus and preach [...]

Ernesto Cardenal died a priest at the age of 95. Minister of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua at the beginning of the 1980s and for this publicly rebuked by St. John Paul during his trip to Managua in 1983, Cardenal had been suspended a divinis because his political position was incompatible with that of [...]

Pope Francis has no scheduled commitments this week. He was supposed to be outside of Rome to participate in the Lenten Spiritual Exercises for the Curia, but he caught a cold and stayed at home. There will be no activity in the Vatican, either. It might be a good break. After Querida Amazonia, the [...]

Pope Francis has always shown admiration for Paul VI. He revealed it for the first time in an interview granted to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera in 2014. Pope Francis’s response can also be considered a good summary of what he thinks and does.

Asked about Humanae Vitae, Pope Francis [...]

The post-Synod exhortation Querida Amazonia did not even mention the possibility to ordain married priests in exceptional cases. Nor it suggested the possibility of having deaconesses or the establishment of an “Amazonian rite”. Concluding the Pan-Amazonian Synod, Pope Francis instead described his dreams for Amazonia, which are, in fact, dreams for the whole [...]

A Benedict XVI text has passed almost unnoticed, unlike the book he wrote with Cardinal Robert Sarah on priestly celibacy: it is the letter that the Pope emeritus wrote last November to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the International Theological Commission.

Benedict XVI’s text is of great importance to [...]

The news that Pope Francis chose, as his new personal secretary, the Uruguayan priest Gonzalo Aemilius is particularly surprising both for the announcement and for timeliness.

The Holy See Press Office had never given before news of who was the Pope’s secretary, since the position is not even included in the Roman Curia organizational [...]

The appointment of Archbishop Cyril Vasil as apostolic administrator sede plena of Kosice eparchy in Slovakia is part of the Vatican reform by to Pope Francis. Archbishop Vasil, a Slovakian, has served for ten years as secretary of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches. According to the draft of the Curia reform – [...]