Is Iran a ‘just war’? U.S. Cardinals weigh in | Inside the Vatican

 

The ONLY IRANIAN CARDINAL MEETS with POPE LEO XIV

Historic Installation: New Archbishop Takes Charge in New York | SG News

Chicago Cardinal: the Church stands with migrants

Oct 27th, 2025 (Updated Nov 3rd, 2025)

Screenshot
Source: Archdiocese of Chicago

Chicago is being particularly hard hit by Donald Trump's crackdown on migrants. More than 3,000 people have been arrested in ICE raids over the past month.

In response, Cardinal Blaise Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago issued the following statement last Tuesday:

My dear brothers and sisters, today I speak to you as your shepherd, but also as a fellow pilgrim who shares the pain of many of our immigrant communities.

Families are being torn apart. Children are left in fear, and communities are shaken by immigration raids and detentions. These actions wound the soul of our city. Let me be clear. The church stands with migrants.

We stand with the mother who crosses borders to feed her children. We stand with the father who labours in silence to build a better future. We stand with the young person who dreams of safety and a better future. Our parishes and schools will not turn away those who seek comfort, and we will not be silent when dignity is denied in the enforcement of the law. It is essential that we respect the dignity of every human being.

Now I want to say something directly to those immigrants without documents. Most of you have been here for years. You have worked hard. You have raised families. You have contributed to this nation. You have earned our respect. As the Archbishop of Chicago, I will insist that you be treated with dignity. Americans should not forget that we all come from immigrant families.

You are our brothers and sisters. We stand with you.

God bless you all.

Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV has made compassionate and humane treatment of migrants a centrepiece of his papacy and urged American Catholics to speak out forcefully on behalf of those being targeted.

In his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi ti, Pope Leo writes: "The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking," wrote Leo in his first major document. "Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. She knows that her proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome. And she knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community."

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US cardinals hold a press conference after Robert Prevost is named...

Catholics Rebuke Donald Trump's AI-Generated Pope Image

Published May 03, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT

Updated May 03, 2025 at 8:27 PM EDT


By Mandy Taheri
Weekend Reporter

Catholics denounced an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated image of President Donald Trump dressed as the pope, calling it offensive and disrespectful as they continue to mourn the death of Pope Francis.

Newsweek has reached out to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Holy See Press for comment via email on Saturday.
Why It Matters

Trump's social media post comes during Novemdiales, the nine-day period of official mourning observed by the Catholic Church following the death of a pope. Daily masses and prayers are being held through May 4 in honor of Francis who died on Easter Monday aged 88.

His funeral on April 26 in St. Peter's Square brought together heads of state, including Trump, religious leaders from around the world, and the general public. His body was laid to rest in St. Mary Major, one of the four papal basilicas in Rome.

Trump's post also comes just days after the president, who is not Catholic, jokingly told reporters that he would "like to be pope," saying "that would be my number one choice." Trump has also vowed to make American "more religious."

Pope Francis, sensing he is close to death, moves to protect his legacy

The battle to succeed Pope Francis is likely to be highly politicized, particularly given the pontiff’s recent clash with Catholic U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

Pope Francis has aimed make the Church more inclusive, opening up key roles to women and LGBT+ people. | Tiziana Fabi/Getty Images

February 17, 2025 10:56 pm CET
By Ben Munster


ROME — Pope Francis is seriously worried about his health after being hospitalized with severe bronchitis, and is rushing to tie up loose ends ahead of the battle to succeed him.

The pope was admitted to a special ward earlier this month in Gemelli Hospital in Rome with a respiratory infection, and he has since been forced to cancel a number of public appearances.

It’s the latest health crisis for the 88-year-old pontiff, who had part of a lung removed as a young man and has become increasingly fragile in recent years. The Holy See press office has trickled out continuous updates, and on Monday said the pope’s bronchitis had advanced to a “polymicrobial infection” with a “complex clinical picture.”

According to two people familiar with the matter, Francis has been suffering from intense pain and has privately expressed certainty he won’t make it this time. On Sunday, doctors at Gemelli distressed the pope by barring him from delivering his regular morning Angelus sermon, which he has rarely missed, even when hospitalized, said one of the people and a third person. He is now acting entirely on “doctors’ orders,” said one of them.

As Pope Francis Champions Migrants, Some Cardinals Court the Far Right

Cardinal Raymond Burke, center, and his fellow ultraconservative prelates are working to extend ecclesiastical cover to nationalist politicians.

Franco Origlia/Getty Images


By Jason Horowitz
June 22, 2019


VATICAN CITY — When the far-right Italian politician Matteo Salvini rose to testify that he hoped to be a better Christian despite being a divorced and first-class “sinner,” one of the ultraconservative cardinals most critical of the pope smiled and clapped on the dais behind him.

“In my own little way, with my professional activity, I try to do my best to help the 60 million Italians with what doesn’t depend on us alone,” Mr. Salvini, Italy’s anti-migrant, nationalist interior minister, said in October at a pontifical university next to the Vatican.

But even as Cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto leader of the conservative opposition to Pope Francis in the Roman Catholic Church, warmly applauded for Mr. Salvini, the pope himself has been less impressed with Mr. Salvini’s “professional activities.”

Those actions have included blocking ships full of desperate migrants from entering Italy and working to destabilize the European Union by flouting its rules and potentially undercutting its currency. On the day after Mr. Salvini’s thumping victory in elections for the European Parliament, Francis warned, as he had for months, that fearmongers had made people “intolerant, closed and perhaps even, without realizing it, racist.”

While the pope has emerged as a leading champion for refugees and migrants around the world, anti-immigration politicians with a populist appeal have found increasing support among once-powerful conservative Catholic figures who have been sidelined within the church by Francis.

Cardinal Burke and his fellow ultraconservative prelates are working to extend ecclesiastical cover to nationalist politicians by hailing them as champions for Western Christianity and traditional values in the face of what they suggest is a Muslim migrant invasion. In the process, the cardinals’ support has helped inoculate the populists from criticism by the pope’s allies and has facilitated their political appeal to conservative Catholic voters.

Catholic bishops in sync with Francis’ inclusive vision of the church have criticized nationalist leaders in Poland, Hungary and the United States for their hard-line views on migration, but those politicians have also enjoyed the support of a small but vocal group of conservative clerics. Perhaps nowhere is that dynamic as stark as in the pope’s own backyard.

Cardinal convicted in sex abuse scandal to meet with the pope

By Associated Press

March 18, 2019 | 1:57pm | Updated

 

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin arrives for a press conference in central France on March 7. AP

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VATICAN CITY — French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is meeting with the pope after having been convicted by a French court of failing to report a known pedophile priest to police.

Barbarin has said he will resign after becoming the latest high-ranking churchman to fall in the global reckoning over clergy sex abuse and cover-ups. He was scheduled for an audience with Pope Francis on Monday morning.

A court in Lyon ruled March 7 that Barbarin had an obligation to report the Rev. Bernard Preynat to civil authorities, and gave the cardinal a six-month suspended prison sentence.

Preynat is scheduled to be tried on sexual violence charges next year. He has confessed to abusing Boy Scouts in the 1970s and 1980s.

Barbarin’s conviction deepens the crisis facing the Catholic Church’s embattled hierarchy.

Source

Cardinal George Pell found guilty of child sexual assault

An Australian court’s gag order is no match for the Internet, as word gets out about prominent cardinal’s conviction

Cardinal George Pell, who faces prosecution for child sexual offenses, walks to a car in Melbourne on Dec. 11, 2018 (William West/AFP/Getty Images)



By Paul Farhi December 13 at 6:59 PM

An Australian court’s gag order and the forces of the Information Age collided on Thursday in a largely futile effort to keep news about the conviction of a high-ranking Vatican official from reaching readers.

While some U.S. and British news organizations, including the New York Times, did not report on the conviction of Australian Cardinal George Pell on the judge’s order, social media and other news outlets defied it.

Pell, 77, was convicted Tuesday on five counts of child sexual abuse in Melbourne, becoming the most senior official ever found guilty in the Catholic Church’s long-running child sexual-abuse scandals. The judge in the case, Peter Kidd, immediately subjected news of Pell’s conviction to a suppression order, the Australian equivalent of a gag order on press coverage.

Australian courts impose such orders to shield defendants from negative publicity that could prejudice future jurors in upcoming trials. Pell faces another trial next year on a separate set of abuse charges dating to the 1970s.

Kidd’s order prevented Australian media outlets from reporting the news about Pell. But news organizations based outside the country also complied with it, apparently out of concern that their Australian operations could be subjected to contempt of court penalties.

In a court session on Thursday, Kidd told defense and prosecution attorneys that some members of the news media are facing “the prospect of imprisonment and indeed substantial imprisonment” if found guilty of breaching his gag order. He did not name names.

The New York Times withheld any mention of Pell’s conviction on its website, despite having given substantial coverage to the allegations against him in the months leading up to his trial. The Times’s most recent story on the matter, dated Wednesday, reported that the Vatican had removed Pell and another cardinal from a council of advisers selected by Pope Francis and that Pell had been “implicated” in a sexual-abuse case. But it didn’t report the outcome of that case, except in its U.S. print editions.

The Associated Press and Reuters news services — two of the largest news organizations in the world — also did not report the news about Pell. Both services have bureaus in Australia that could face potential liability.

An AP spokeswoman, Lauren Easton, issued a brief statement reading, “AP is working to report the story while complying with the gag order.” She declined further comment.

A Reuters spokeswoman, Heather Carpenter, also issued a statement but declined to comment further. “Reuters is a global news organization with nearly 200 locations around the world — including in Australia — and is subject to the laws of the countries in which we operate,” she said.

The Washington Post reported Pell’s conviction on Wednesday. But its story was removed from Apple News, the news aggregation app owned by Apple Inc. that is available in the United Kingdom, U.S. and Australia.

NPR, the Daily Beast and the National Catholic Reporter, among others, also reported Pell’s conviction.

The suppression order led to bizarrely curtailed reports in the Australian media, but did little to stop the news from emerging on social media.

A story in the Sydney Morning Herald published Wednesday, for example, didn’t refer to the name, position or even gender of the person involved. One of its story began, “A very high-profile figure was convicted on Tuesday of a serious crime, but we are unable to report their identity due to a suppression order. The person, whose case has attracted significant media attention, was convicted on the second attempt, after the jury in an earlier trial was unable to reach a verdict. They will be remanded when they return to court in February for sentencing.”

The Herald Sun of Melbourne ran the story on its front page on Thursday under a bold headline: “Censored.”

Courts in the Australian state of Victoria — where Pell’s trial took place — issued nearly 1,600 suppression orders between 2014 and 2016 after Victoria enacted a law protecting court proceedings in 2013, according to a review of the practice by a retired Australian judge, Frank Vincent. Victoria accounted for about half of all the orders issued in Australia, according to the Morning Herald.

The orders restrict what journalists can report about certain cases, and when they can report it.

But the gag rule has proved futile against the Internet. By Wednesday afternoon, Pell and the charges against him were the subject of thousands of tweets and shared posts on Facebook. The posts included links to websites where the news was available.

“The social-media age has really made this approach untenable in my view, especially in cases like this where there is genuine international public interest in the verdict and conviction involving a prominent figure in the hierarchy of one of the world’s most powerful institutions,” said Julie Posetti, an Australian-born journalist and academic who is a senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Great Britain.

Since a gag order suppresses professional news reporting but not social-media sharing, it may have the unintended consequence of elevating “unverified rumor and gossip” over actual journalism, she said.

In a statement, Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said the order would not deter The Post’s reporting. “This story is a matter of major news significance involving an individual of global prominence,” Baron said. “A fundamental principle of The Washington Post is to report the news truthfully, which we did. While we always consider guidelines given by courts and governments, we must ultimately use our judgment and exercise our right to publish such consequential news. Freedom of the press in the world will cease to exist if a judge in one country is allowed to bar publication of information anywhere in the world.”

Baron was formerly editor of the Boston Globe and oversaw its coverage of sexual abuse allegations against priests in the Boston archdiocese in 2002. The stories won a Pulitzer Prize and were the basis for the movie “Spotlight,” which won the Oscar for best picture in 2016.

Source

Wealthy Catholics to target Cardinals with ‘Red Hat Report’

Christopher White Oct 1, 2018 

NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT

Pope Francis places a red hat on new Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, the Chaldean Catholic patriarch, during a consistory at which the pope created 14 new cardinals in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican June 28. (Credit: CNS.) 

ROME - As U.S. bishops work to formulate an official response to clerical sexual abuse and cover-up, a new watchdog group backed by wealthy Catholics is seeking to take matters into their own hands.

A new organization, which held an RSVP-only event on Sunday evening, plans to spend more than $1 million in the next year investigating every member of the College of Cardinals “to name those credibly accused in scandal, abuse, or cover-ups.”

“The Better Church Governance Group” held its launch on the campus of the Catholic University of America (CUA) with the stated intention of producing its “Red Hat Report” by April 2020.

The U.S. bishops founded the Catholic University of America, and all six residential U.S. cardinals are members of its Board of Trustees.

In a statement to Crux, a CUA spokesperson said, “A space on campus was reserved by a student in accordance with our space reservation procedures. The event was not sponsored by The Catholic University of America nor a university-sponsored organization.”

The organizers of the Better Church Governance group confirmed that it was a private event, and in an e-mail to Crux said there was no association between the university and the organization.

The Red Hat Report, dubbed as the group’s “flagship project,” is designed to audit all 124 current papal electors. Organizers say it will be conducted by a team of, to date, nearly 100 researchers, academics, investigators, and journalists, with the aim “to hold the hierarchy of the Catholic Church accountable for abuse and corruption, and to develop and support honesty, clarity, and fidelity in Church governance.”

In an audio recording obtained by Crux of the event’s launch, Better Church Governance’s Operations Director, Jacob Imam, said the organization was not meant as an attack on Pope Francis, though he asked the crowd of nearly forty attendees: “What if we would have had someone else in 2013 who would have been more proactive in protecting the innocent and the young?”

“Had we had the Red Hat Report, we may not have had Pope Francis,” stated one of the slide presentations accompanying his remarks.

Imam, who is currently a Marshall Scholar of the University of Oxford and converted to Catholicism from Islam three years ago, alleged that following the 2013 conclave that elected Francis, many major news outlets based their knowledge of the newly elected pope on what they could find on Wikipedia.

US prelate McCarrick resigns from College of Cardinals

By FRANCES D'EMILIO | Associated Press



VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has accepted U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick's offer to resign from the College of Cardinals following allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy, and ordered him to conduct a "life of prayer and penance" in a home to be designated by the pontiff until a church trial is held, the Vatican said Saturday.

Francis acted swiftly after receiving McCarrick's letter of resignation Friday evening, after recent weeks have brought a spate of allegations that the 88-year-old prelate in the course of his distinguished clerical career had sexually abused both boys and adult seminarians. The revelations posed a test to the pontiff's recently declared resolve to battle what he called a "culture of cover-up" of similar abuse in the Catholic's church's hierarchy.

McCarrick has been removed from public ministry since June 20, pending a full investigation into allegations he fondled a teenager over 40 years ago in New York City. A man, who was 11 at the time of the first alleged instance of abuse, says a sexually abusive relationship continued for two more decades. McCarrick has denied the initial allegation.

The prelate rose steadily up the U.S. Church's ranks, from auxiliary bishop in New York City, to bishop in Metuchen, N.J., to archbishop of Newark, N.J., and then to Archbishop of Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, the city where the papal ambassador to the United States is based.

While most of the scandals involving pedophile clergy have involved rank-and-file priests, some cases involved bishops, and there are a few involving cardinals, including a current case in Australia of one of Pope Francis' closest advisers, Cardinal George Pell.

In the case of Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien, accused by former seminarians in 2013 of sexual misconduct, Francis only accepted his resignation after the Vatican's top abuse prosecutor conducted a full investigation, two years after the first revelations came out.

But Saturday's announcement by the Holy See said that Francis was taking action, by isolating McCarrick and ordering his penance even before "accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial." In addition, Francis, "ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry," indicating he was approving the measure already in effect since last month.

Source

Revelations of US cardinal sex abuse will force pope’s hand

 


By NICOLE WINFIELD

Today



VATICAN CITY (AP) — Revelations that one of the most respected U.S. cardinals allegedly sexually abused both boys and adult seminarians have raised questions about who in the Catholic Church hierarchy knew — and what Pope Francis is going to do about it.

If the accusations against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick bear out — including a new case reported Friday involving an 11-year-old boy — will Francis revoke his title as cardinal? Sanction him to a lifetime of penance and prayer? Or even defrock him, the expected sanction if McCarrick were a mere priest?

And will Francis, who has already denounced a “culture of cover-up” in the church, take the investigation all the way to the top, where it will inevitably lead? McCarrick’s alleged sexual misdeeds with adults were reportedly brought to the Vatican’s attention years ago.

The matter is now on the desk of the pope, who has already spent the better part of 2018 dealing with a spiraling child sex abuse, adult gay priest sex and cover-up scandal in Chile that was so vast the entire bishops’ conference offered to resign in May.

And on Friday, Francis accepted the resignation of the Honduran deputy to Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, who is one of Francis’ top advisers. Auxiliary Bishop Juan José Pineda Fasquelle, 57, was accused of sexual misconduct with seminarians and lavish spending on his lovers that was so obvious to Honduras’ poverty-wracked faithful that Maradiaga is now under pressure to reveal what he knew of Pineda’s misdeeds and why he tolerated a sexually active gay bishop in his ranks.

The McCarrick scandal poses the same questions. It was apparently an open secret in some U.S. church circles that “Uncle Ted” invited seminarians to his beach house, and into his bed.

While such an abuse of power may have been quietly tolerated for decades, it doesn’t fly in the #MeToo era. And there has been a deafening silence from McCarrick’s brother bishops about what they might have known and when.

Fraternal solidarity is common among clerics, but some observers point to it as possible evidence of the so-called “gay lobby” or “lavender mafia” at work. These euphemisms — frequently denounced as politically incorrect displays of homophobia in the church — are used by some to describe a perceived protection and promotion network of gay Catholic clergy.

Serve the poor, shun 'palace intrigue,' pope tells new cardinals

World News

June 28, 2018 / 11:58 AM / 2 days ago

Serve the poor, shun 'palace intrigue,' pope tells new cardinals

Philip Pullella


3 Min Read


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis installed 14 Catholic churchmen as cardinals on Thursday, putting another stamp on the group that will one day elect his successor.

Pope Francis leads a consistory ceremony to install 14 new cardinals in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, June 28 2018. REUTERS/Tony Gentile

Presiding at a ceremony known as a consistory in St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis told the new cardinals that their mission was to serve the poor and the Church and not seek privileges.


Francis has now chosen 59 of the 125 cardinal electors under 80 years old who would be eligible to enter a conclave after his death or resignation. Eleven of the new cardinals are under 80.

With each future consistory, Francis will add to the number of cardinal electors he has chosen, increasing the possibility that his successor will continue his policy of a more open, inclusive and forgiving Church.

“What does it profit us to gain the whole world if we are living in a stifling atmosphere of intrigues that dry up our hearts and impede our mission?” Francis said at the service where he gave each man a three-cornered “red biretta” hat and a ring of office.

New cardinal Toribio Ticona Porco of Bolivia is seen during a consistory ceremony to install 14 new cardinals in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, June 28 2018. REUTERS/Tony Gentile

He urged them to shun “palace intrigues” he said sometimes take place in the Vatican and in Church administrations around the world and avoid “useless wrangling about who is most important”.

The new cardinals, whose selection the pope first announced on May 20, come from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Iraq, Pakistan, Japan, Madagascar, Peru, Mexico and Bolivia.

In the past five years, Francis, an Argentine, has tried to make the Church less Euro-centric, choosing more men from Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, increasing the possibility that his successor will also be a non-European.

Cardinals for a global church

Cardinal-designate focuses on the pastoral at doctrinal congregation

By Junno Arocho Esteves
Posted: 6/5/2018

 

Archbishop Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, speaks at a news conference to present the document, "Placuit Deo," at the Vatican March 1. Archbishop Ladaria was one of 14 new cardinals named by Pope Francis May 20. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)



VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When he was named secretary of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, Cardinal-designate Luis F. Ladaria Ferrer marveled at being unexpectedly thrust into the limelight.

"That was very surprising. I would never have thought of ending up here. And I'm not the only one, seeing that my name was never mentioned in the newspapers," he said in August 2008 in an interview with the Italian Catholic magazine "30 Giorni."

Since then, the Jesuit prelate has had his share of surprises, which culminated in his appointment as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and now as a cardinal.

Born in Manacor, Mallorca, April 19, 1944, Cardinal-designate Ladaria earned a law degree at the University of Madrid. After obtaining his degree, however, he "realized that was not what I wanted."

"I wanted to become a priest, and I liked the Society of Jesus, which I knew. And so, it was a path open before me that I set out on almost naturally," he told "30 Giorni."

He entered the Jesuits in 1966 and, after studying theology and philosophy in Spain and Germany, he was ordained to the priesthood July 29, 1973.

As someone who "liked studying," the Spanish prelate went on to earn a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1975 and began teaching dogmatic theology at the Pontifical University Comillas in Madrid. Nine years later, he returned to the Gregorian to teach, and he served as vice rector of the university from 1986 to 1994.

But, Cardinal-designate told "30 Giorni" that his time as vice-rector was "not very important."

"The Gregorian taught me to live in an international environment with students from over 100 countries, of different languages, races and cultures. All united by the love of study, but above all, of the Lord and his church. In a real university, students not only learn from professors, but also the reverse occurs. And I learned a lot from my students," he said.

Cardinal-designate Ladaria also said his time in Rome as a professor shaped his view on handling church issues that often can be used to advance extremist agendas, both on the left and the right.

"I must say that I don't like extremisms; either progressive or traditionalist ones," he said. "I believe that there is a middle path, which is taken by most professors of theology in Rome and in the church in general, which I think is the correct path to take."

Conservative cardinals challenge Pope over teachings on family

By Philip Pullella
Reuters

November 14, 2016



Pope Francis leads a Jubilee audience in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican November 12, 2016. REUTERS/Remo CasilliLess


By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Four conservative Roman Catholic cardinals on Monday made a rare public challenge to Pope Francis over some of his teachings in a major document on the family, accusing him of sowing confusion on important moral issues.


The cardinals - two Germans, an Italian, and an American - said they had gone public with their letter to the pope because he had not responded.

The pope has clashed before with conservatives who worry he is weakening Roman Catholic rules on moral issues such as homosexuality and divorce while focusing on social problems such as climate change and economic inequality.

At issue are some of the teachings in a 260-page treatise called "Amoris Laetitia" (The Joy of Love), a cornerstone document of Francis' attempt to make the 1.2 billion-member Church more inclusive and less condemning.

In the document, issued in April, he called for a Church that was less strict and more compassionate towards any "imperfect" members, such as those who divorced and remarried, saying "no one can be condemned forever".

Most critics have focused on what the pope's letter said about the full re-integration into the Church of members who divorce and remarry in civil ceremonies.

Under Church law they cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner, because their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church and therefore they are seen to be living in an adulterous state of sin.

In the document the pope appeared to side with progressives

who had proposed an "internal forum" in which a priest or bishop decide jointly with the individual on a case-by-case basis if he or she can be fully re-integrated and receive communion.

Conservatives have contested this and, in their cover letter, the four cardinals asked the pope to "resolve those doubts which are the cause of disorientation and confusion".

In the letter, sent to several news organizations, they said even bishops were offering "contrasting interpretations" of the rules regarding divorced and remarried Catholics.

The cardinals are Raymond Leo Burke, an American who was demoted from a senior Vatican position in 2014 and who has often criticized the pope, Germans Walter Brandmuller and Joachim Meisner, and Italian Carlo Caffarra.

In their letter, they officially asked the pope to take a stand on five "doubts" they have about some of the pronouncements in his document and declare whether those supersede rulings by previous popes.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Source

Source Confirms Pope Will Remove Conservative Cardinal from Vatican

by Austin Ruse 29 Sep 2014


Though it has been only a rumor until now, and has not yet been announced by the Vatican, a close associate of Cardinal Raymond Burke has told Breitbart News that the rumors of his departure are true, and the announcement is expected soon.

The source said Burke has been told he is out as head of the Apostolic Signatura and that he will assume the position of chaplain to the Order of Malta, a do-gooding organization of wealthy and sometimes European-titled Catholics.

Burke is a darling of Catholic conservatives around the world, having taken strong positions against pro-abortion politicians receiving communion, holding firm on traditional liturgy, and even excommunicating women who have tried to become ordained priests.

The source also told Breitbart News that the Pope did not ask Cardinal Burke where he wanted to go, which would have been a friendly gesture to someone the Pope wanted out of the powerful position in what could be considered Chief Justice of the Vatican Supreme Court.

In recent weeks, Burke has been outspoken that the upcoming planning session for the Synod of Bishops cannot change Church teaching on marriage. He went so far as to co-author a book with other Cardinals making this clear, something that puts Burke at odds with some of the closer associates of Pope Francis.

The source added, "Cardinal Burke wasn't even asked. He could have been given a diocese somewhere. As chaplain to Malta he has no role in the governance of the Church. This is just mean. He's been given a ceremonial role that usually goes to an 80 year old in his retirement and not to a 66 year old man in his prime."

Burke’s firing would come almost a year after Pope Francis removed Cardinal Burke from the powerful Vatican committee that chooses Bishops around the world. It was here that Burke had the strongest influence.



Source

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Pope Francis: ‘One in 50’ Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals is a paedophile

Francis I pledges to drive out the 'leprosy' of child abuse from the Church
ADAM WITHNALL


Sunday 13 July 2014


Pope Francis has revealed that “reliable data” collected by the Vatican suggests that one in every 50 members of the Catholic clergy is a paedophile.

Speaking in an interview with La Repubblica, the Pope said his advisers had tried to “reassure” him that paedophilia within the Church was “at the level of two per cent”.

He pledged that he would drive away the “leprosy” of child abuse that was infecting the “house” of Catholicism.

“I find this state of affairs intolerable,” he said.

Pope Francis said his advisers at the Vatican had given him the 2 per cent estimate, which included “priests, bishops and cardinals”.

He also warned of much greater figures for people who were aware of the existence of abuse – sometimes within their own families – but who stayed silent because of corruption or fear.

READ MORE:
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His comments came a week after the Pope met with six victims of clerical paedophilia to apologise for their abuse at the hands of priests.

The meeting, with six British, Irish and German Catholics, was designed to acknowledge the gravity of the Church’s guilt and complicity.



Despite Pope Francis’s popularity, there has been criticism of him for failing to take a high-profile stand against the global paedophilia scandal.

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, met with victims of sexual abuse by priests, in Washington in 2008. He then met with victims in Australia, Germany, Malta and the UK.

In February and May, critical reports released by two separate UN committees condemned the Church’s “code of silence” on paedophile priests. It said this silence was allowing known sex offenders to continue working with children.

Source

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