Source: America – The Jesuit Review Justin McLellan – Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) — For the first time, women will serve on the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, the committee that oversees implementation of the most recent synod and prepares the next assembly. The Vatican announced Dec. 13 Pope Francis’ nomination of four members to the 16th Ordinary Council of the Vatican synod office. Among his choices are: Consolata Missionary Sister Simona Brambilla, secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and María Lía Zervino, a member of…
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Source: Peter Anderson, Seattle USA On October 26, 2024, the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church issued its Final Document on the subject, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission.” At the present time, the Final Document is only available in Italian and can be read at https://www.synod.va/content/dam/synod/news/2024-10-26_final-document/ITA—Documento-finale-26.10.pdf . Official translations in other languages will be available in the near future. However, in the meantime, I have attached a Google English translation of the Final Document. The Final Document is the culmination of a long process that began three years ago and included consultations at…
Source: The National Herald By Matthew Namee* For a while now, I’ve been documenting the close relationship between the U.S. government and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in the early years of the Cold War. It was thanks in large part to American influence that Athenagoras attained the throne in Constantinople, and he relished the idea that he was an agent of Americanism, the West’s counterweight to the ascendant Soviet-backed Moscow Patriarchate. Things began to shift in the mid-1950s, as Greek Cypriots revolted against British rule in Cyprus, leading to tensions between the Greeks and Turks of the island. Turkey began to…
Source: The National Herald By Theodore Kalmoukos BOSTON – The Ecumenical Patriarchate sent an official delegation to the Vatican for the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Protomartyrs Peter and Paul, which is also the Throne Feast of Rome. The official delegation consisted of His Eminence Metropolitan Job of Pisidia, Co-Chairman of the Committee for Dialogue between Orthodox and Roman Catholics, His Grace Bishop of Nazianzus Athenagoras, Chief Secretary of the Holy Eparchial Synod of the Archdiocese of America, and the Patriarchal Deacon Kallinikos. The delegation was received at the Vatican with great honors. They participated in the Divine…
Source: Peter Anderson, Seattle USA On January 23, 2023, President Zelensky of Ukraine signed Decree № 26/2023 “On the application of personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions).” https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/262023-45613 Attached to the decree are the names of 22 individuals, all of whom are representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Six individuals are sanctioned for 30 years, while 16 are sanctioned for five years. See also https://lb.ua/society/2023/01/24/543485_zelenskiy_zaprovadiv_sanktsii_proti.html. The first person on the list of those sanctioned for 30 years is Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), presently Metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary. As is well-known, he was chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department…
Source: Orthodox Times Originally published on June 30, 2021 The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew gave a strong response to those who – as he stated- forget the truth that “Our Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest power of the Church, and dream of the Ecumenical Patriarchate “somewhere abroad, as a Vatican of Orthodoxy, with worldly glory and power”. In his speech after the Divine Liturgy, which he presided today on the feast of the Assemblies of the Holy Apostles, at the solemnized Holy Church in Ferikoy, the Ecumenical Patriarch stressed that: “for the Church of Christ there are no worldly powers.…
Source: National Catholic Reporter by Thomas Reese, Religion News Service Computers are unforgiving, but Christianity is supposed to be forgiving. Computers insist that humans, especially programmers, be exact. A single wrong letter in a line of code can crash a program. But even ordinary users can experience this. Nothing puts us into panic like a computer telling us: “Invalid Username or Password.” The religion of Jesus is supposed to be forgiving. He attacked the Scribes and the Pharisees for their emphasis on the minutiae of the law. Yet, even under Pope Francis, who is all about compassion and forgiveness, the literalists appear…
Source: The Moscow Times The Russian Orthodox Church has developed plans to construct its own Vatican to the tune of $2 billion in the Moscow region, the Vedomosti business daily reported on Thursday. Church officials have been in talks with officials in the city of Sergiyev Posad to transform it into the capital of Orthodoxy since 2017. Sergiyev Posad is the location of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius monastery, considered the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church. Earlier this year, the Church asked President Vladimir Putin to support the project, an unnamed government source told Vedomosti. The Church…
Source: Sputnik Moscow and the Holy See are working together on the issue of moral values and persecuted Christians. This cooperation is beneficial for both parties, from a diplomatic and political viewpoint, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote. According to Le Figaro, since the end of the Cold War, the Vatican has always been willing to hold a dialogue with Moscow. “Russia has become one of the centers of a new polycentric world order, an empire in the process of establishment, which one should offer one’s hand,” political expert Canstance Colonna-Cesari said cited by the newspaper. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the relations between Moscow and the Vatican were characterized…
Source: The Pilot By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While Catholic and Armenian Orthodox theologians continue discussions aimed at full unity, Pope Francis and Catholicos Karekin II of Etchmiadzin, patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church, commemorated the already-achieved unity of Armenian Catholic and Orthodox martyrs in heaven. Pope Francis concelebrated Mass April 12 with Armenian Catholic Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni in the presence of Catholicos Karekin and thousands of Armenian Catholic and Orthodox faithful. Media attention focused on the diplomatic tensions created between the Vatican and Turkey when Pope Francis used the term “genocide” to describe the deaths…
Source: Get Religion by Terry Mattingly What can be said about the images that are coming out of Libya, in that hellish Islamic State video showing the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians – explicitly for their faith and their connection to “crusaders”? This is a story with so much religious imagery and language in it that there is no way for journalists to avoid the ghosts. Religion News Service, and some other news outlets, are using a very important quote from Pope Francis: “The blood of our Christian brothers is a witness that cries out,” Francis said in off-the-cuff remarks…
Source: Religion News Service by Josephine McKenna VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis launched a blistering attack on the Vatican bureaucracy on Monday (Dec. 22), outlining a “catalog of illnesses” that plague the church’s central administration, including “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and gossipy cliques. The pope’s traditional Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See was more “Bah! Humbug!” than holiday cheer as he ticked off a laundry list of “ailments of the Curia” that he wants to cure. READ: The doctor is in: Pope Francis’ diagnosis for what ails the church (RNS) In a critique that left many of the assembled clerics clearly uncomfortable,…