Pope Francis announced the third consistory of his pontificate the day after Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco was elected President of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CEBC). The two events are not linked. But the two choices indicate two different orientations. And this leads to a question: is there a submerged schism in [...]

Paradoxically, Pope Francis’s “Back to the Future” adventure happened with his two-step trip to Caucasia, that is, in those lands where history is measured in millenniums, rather than in centuries. It is really looking toward East, to those lands full of history, that one can find the future challenges of Catholicism, for at [...]

There is a thread that links Pope Francis’s international trips with Curia reform and even with the profile of new bishops – in the end, the real reform of Pope Francis. This thread outlines criteria provided by three keywords: periphery, decentralization, “pastorality”. These are the three main topics of Pope Francis’s pontificate – [...]

What is the Holy See’s latest mission? To take religions out of the ghetto where they have been abandoned as a result of public opinion and radicalism. This mission seemed to be the main theme behind the speeches that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, delivered at the United Nations.

In [...]

Benedict XVI’s “Last Conversations,” the recently published book interview with journalist Peter Seewald is not only a sort of final chapter of the Pope Emeritus’s biography – he will soon turn 90 – the book is a clue to interpreting the Church that shows once more just how few people really understand

With his second motu proprio in a few months, Pope Francis completed one part of the much discussed Curia reform, thus closing the era of reforms that followed Blessed Pope Paul VI’s rationale. The new dicastery for Integral Human Development does not simply mark the shutdown of the Pontifical Councils for Justice and [...]

There is something prophetic in the choice of the European spiritual crisis as the topic for discussion by Benedict XVI’s former students during this year’s meeting. Benedict XVI, even as Cardinal Ratzinger before his election to the papacy, addressed this issue with in-depth analysis on multiple occasions, while he lamented the fact [...]

The appointment of Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas as Prefect of the new dicastery “Laity, Family and Life” took many by surprise. True, for a long time there has been a strong push from the US bishops to have a new influential representative in the Curia, after Msgr. Peter Bryan Wells, former Assessor [...]

According to Vatican rumors, Statutes of the new Vatican dicastery “Charity, Justice and Peace” are to be published September 1. The newest dicastery will replace the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Pontifical Council for Migrants, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum and the Pontifical Council for Health Workers. All of the competences [...]