Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, will go to Moscow on August 20-24, and the news of his upcoming trip re-opened the discussion about a possible trip to Russia by Pope Francis.

Cardinal Parolin’s official schedule for the trip has not been released yet. It seems certain that the Cardinal will meet [...]

Two anniversaries celebrated during the past week were an occasion to look back in time to the very origins of the challenges the Holy See has been facing in recent years. In fact, only by looking back in time, do we see that the Holy See, and in general the Catholic Church, does not [...]

Since Francis became pontiff, the narrative has been that he was called to change everything in the Church. To cut out the ancient traditions. To “empty out” the Church, making her poor among the poor. Even to put aside, for the sake of a more spiritual Church, all those institutions that were [...]

The frenzy generated around the letter that Benedict XVI sent to the funeral of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne, and his longtime friend, reveals much of what the Church has become and, in particular, how divisive the internal debate in the Church has become.

In his moving and personal remembrance of [...]

None of the most important media outlets have covered the news that the investigation on Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who allegedly cover up priestly abuse on minors, was definitely archived.  The charges against the Archbishop of Lyon were unsubstantiated.

When the allegations were made public, media outlets strongly attacked the Cardinal, while the [...]

The appointment of Archbishop Luis Ladaria as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a further proof – if any proof were still needed – that Pope Francis’s appointments in the Curia reveal neither what he is really thinking nor who his friends are.

Archbishop Ladaria is held in [...]

Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence from his post as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. The announcement of the leave came just one week after the news broke that the Vatican’s General Auditor, Libero Milone, resigned. Though the two events might be linked and the connection between them [...]

During the days in which a letter to Pope Francis by the four cardinals of the dubia was disclosed, the Pope paid a half-day visit to pray on the tombs of Fr. Primo Mazzolari and Fr. Lorenzo Milani. The Pope thus paid homage to two priests, very much ahead of their times, [...]

The news of a commission to reinterpret Humanae Vitae – broken first by Vatican-watcher Marco Tosatti, and later by the website Corrispondenza Romana – is in fact part of a wider issue. This issue does not deal only with Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical, but, on a wider scale, it deals with the [...]

The bishops of Venezuela, who came last week to Rome to meet Pope Francis, trusted in the Holy See’s moral strength and its international influence. If the Pope – this is the rationale – were to speak out on the Venezuelan crisis, administrations and international institutions would understand that it is about time [...]