Roman Catholic Church

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares65 Views

    Recovering Pope Francis Surprises Pilgrims With a Public Appearance

    by

    Pope Francis was wheeled through a crowd that included health care workers from around the world, who had been told he was watching their Jubilee Mass on television.As entrances go, this one was both unexpected and welcome. That much was clear from the thunderous applause and cheers on Sunday as Pope Francis made his first public appearance since leaving a Rome hospital two weeks ago.Francis arrived, unannounced, on the dais in St. Peter’s Square near the end of a Mass that was part of a pilgrimage by health care workers and their patients.The pope said very few words, his voice still strained after a six-week hospital stay for pneumonia and other problems that his doctors said twice brought him close to death.“Happy Sunday to everyone, many thanks,” Francis said, waving his hands. A nasal cannula was visible in both nostrils; Francis continues to rely on supplemental oxygen, the Vatican has said.Sitting on a wheelchair pushed by his trusted nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti, Francis moved through groups of pilgrims — including dozens of doctors and nurses from around the world — who had come the Vatican on Sunday for this weekend’s Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers.“What a wonderful surprise — the pope still has health problems but he wanted to give a gift to the faithful,” said Lamberto Rosa, a businessman who volunteers with the Order of Malta at some Vatican events. “He has a fighting spirit and wants to be present.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares114 Views

      in Elections

      Pope Francis Makes Public Appearance in Rome

      by

      From a balcony, Francis greeted hundreds of people waiting outside the hospital where he had been treated for respiratory problems.Pope Francis, looking frail and with belabored breathing that made it difficult for him to speak, made his first appearance in more than six weeks Sunday, appearing briefly on the balcony of a Rome hospital to greet hundreds of people gathered in the square in front.“Thank you everyone,” he said in a wisp of a voice. The pope later left the hospital to briefly stop at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, which has an icon of the Virgin Mary he is devoted to, before heading to the Vatican guesthouse where he lives.“I see a woman with yellow flowers,” Francis said during his appearance on the second-floor balcony after he was brought out in a wheelchair. “She’s good,” he said, complimenting her. He then sat and waved with both hands while people cheered and waved flags.But after more than a month out of the public eye, Francis emerged deeply changed and diminished looking, underlining what will be a long recovery and a new phase for him and the church. It became apparent on the balcony that, for now, the Francis of old, who spoke off the cuff and made physical closeness to the faithful a hallmark of his pontificate, was transformed.The pope’s voice was thin and raspy, which was to be expected for a patient who had suffered serious damage to his lungs and respiratory muscles, as his doctors explained at a news conference Saturday.His appearance on Sunday was met with cheers of “Papa Francesco” from the faithful outside the hospital. “Long live the pope,” someone called out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Fact-Checking Trump’s Justice Dept. Speech on Crime, Immigration and His Cases

      by

      President Trump repeated a number of well-trodden falsehoods on Friday in a grievance-fueled speech at the Justice Department, veering from prepared remarks to single out lawyers and prosecutors and assail the criminal investigations into him.His remarks, billed as a policy address, were wide-ranging, touching on immigration, crime and the price of eggs.Here’s a fact-check.Mr. Trump’s misleading claims touched on:His legal troublesThe 2020 electionBiden and classified documentsThe Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the CapitolParents, anti-abortion activists and CatholicsImmigration and crimeEgg pricesHis legal troublesWhat Was Said“They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.”“They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home Mar-a-Lago and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump’s claims refer to a wide array of investigations and criminal cases that occurred before, during and after his first term as president.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      In Pittsburgh, Many Sentiments About Pope’s Health Reflect Concern, Not Closeness

      by

      On a recent weekend in this once deeply Catholic city, many expressed worry about Pope Francis, but there was also an air of ambivalence.Congregants escaping the winter morning’s chill trickled into Immaculate Heart of Mary Church for Sunday Mass last weekend. There was a time when the massive brick church, which stands like a beacon atop Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood, would have been packed with parishioners who lived in the surrounding blocks.Mark Dobies and his wife, Kim, remember those days. Their grandfathers were among the Polish immigrants who built the church, whose interior is bathed in an ethereal light by the stained-glass windows. The couple, who live two blocks away, were married under the church’s dome, as were their parents.“I’ve watched it evolve,” Mr. Dobies said after Sunday’s service, which resembled a pandemic Mass with far more pews empty than occupied. “People migrated out of the city.”This arc of a storied church in what was once a deeply Catholic city has in many ways mirrored what has taken place around the country, as ethnic congregations in working-class neighborhoods shriveled when manufacturing jobs disappeared. The church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal only exacerbated the decline.Now, that distancing from the church might be seen here in another way: the relative ambivalence toward Pope Francis, whose health is increasingly frail. There might be an occasional candle lit in Pittsburgh for Francis, the 88-year-old pontiff, but there are no massive public vigils or signs of a community on edge.“I’m praying, but I don’t know a lot about him,” Carol Novak said after a Monday morning Mass at St. Anthony Chapel, a quaint church in the Troy Hill neighborhood that boasts of housing more relics than anywhere outside of Rome.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Faith Leaders Need to Loudly Defend Routine Childhood Vaccinations

      by

      As of this writing, the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico has spread to 99 people; 95 percent of those diagnosed with measles this year are unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccine status, and the vast majority of those affected are under 19. The outbreak is concentrated in Gaines County, Texas, a rural area in West Texas with a disproportionately high level of religious or philosophical exemptions to vaccines — a whopping 47.95 percent of students from one of only three public school districts in the county claimed exemptions in the 2023-24 school year. The percentage of exemptions in all of Gaines County is nearly 14 percent, and that doesn’t include home-schooled children.Earlier this month, the Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said that the outbreak in Gaines County was mostly among the “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, whose members don’t get regular health care and don’t attend public school. “The church isn’t the reason that they’re not vaccinated,” Anton said in a news release. “It’s all personal choice and you can do whatever you want.”“Do whatever you want” might be good advice for choosing a fun new wallpaper, but it’s terrible advice for encouraging vaccine uptake.You might assume that many religious groups are doctrinally opposed to vaccination. Why else would the majority of states allow for religious or philosophical exemptions to school vaccine mandates? But that is not accurate. The Mennonite leadership, as Anton points out, is not against vaccines — and neither are most other major religious groups. The U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches made a statement in 2021 regarding the Covid vaccine that “our confession of faith and our current and historical practice do not provide the necessary rationale for granting a religious exemption based on the theological convictions of the denomination” (italics theirs).This isn’t the first time that undervaccinated religious groups have been at the epicenter of measles outbreaks. In 1991, a Philadelphia measles outbreak that killed nine people spread in two church communities that did not believe in any medical intervention. In 2018-19, an outbreak in Brooklyn took root among undervaccinated Orthodox Jews.As Caitlin Rivers points out in a recent guest essay for Times Opinion, routine childhood vaccines are still very, very popular in the United States. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is already going back on promises he made about vaccines during his confirmation hearing. Earlier he said he wouldn’t mess with the childhood vaccination schedule, and now he’s saying “Nothing is going to be off limits.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Pope Francis Will Remain in Hospital for ‘Complex’ Clinical Issue

      by

      Pope Francis was admitted on Friday with a respiratory infection. The announcement on Monday did not provide further detail, but raised fresh concerns about the pontiff’s health.Pope Francis will remain in a Rome hospital after being admitted late last week following a series of tests that indicated a “complex clinical picture,” the Vatican said on Monday, raising fresh concerns about the 88-year-old pontiff’s health.Diagnostic tests carried out after Francis was taken to Policlinico A. Gemelli on Friday presented “a polymicrobial respiratory tract infection,” and his doctors had changed treatment accordingly, the Vatican said in a statement.The complex clinical picture “would require an appropriate medical stay,” it said, without elaborating.Francis was hospitalized in 2023 with a respiratory infection, but was able to leave the hospital after three days.Francis has had a busy schedule since New Year’s Eve, when he presided over the opening of the 2025 Jubilee, held every 25 years in the Roman Catholic Church.The Vatican announced in early February that Francis had bronchitis, but he continued his activities, holding smaller audiences at the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guesthouse where he lives, but presiding over larger gatherings and Masses with thousands of pilgrims, including an outdoor Mass in St. Peter’s Square earlier this month.The Vatican said that a general audience on Wednesday was canceled.After he entered the hospital, doctors prescribed complete rest. Subsequent medical updates said he was in “stable” condition.The pope, who had part of a lung removed as a young man, has a recent history of medical challenges. He has knee problems and sciatica that have caused a severe limp and, in recent years, often required him to use a wheelchair, walker or cane.In 2021, he had colon surgery. After his bout with bronchitis in 2023, he was hospitalized again a few months later to undergo abdominal surgery for a hernia. Last year, he underwent diagnostic tests at the Gemelli hospital after a slight flu.On Monday morning, Francis ate breakfast and read some newspapers after a restful night, said Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, adding that the pontiff was “in good spirits.” Mr. Bruni said a medical update would be issued later Monday. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court to Hear Catholic Charity’s Bid for Tax Exemption

      by

      The justices agreed to hear an appeal from a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the charity’s activities were insufficiently religious to qualify.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Wisconsin was free to deny a tax exemption to a Catholic charity on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.The court has been notably receptive to arguments from religious groups, and the new case will give the justices another opportunity to explore the limits of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.The case concerns a Wisconsin law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”Catholic Charities Bureau, the social ministry of the Catholic Diocese in Superior, Wis., has said its mission is to provide “services to the poor and disadvantaged as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church.” State officials determined that the charity did not qualify for the exemption because it “provides essentially secular services and engages in activities that are not religious per se.”The Wisconsin Supreme Court said it accepted the charity’s contention that its services were “based on Gospel values and the principles of the Catholic social teachings.” But the court ruled that the group’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular” and did not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.”The court added that “both employment with the organizations and services offered by the organizations are open to all participants regardless of religion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Retired Louisiana Priest Pleads Guilty to Rape and Kidnapping Charges

      by

      Lawrence Hecker, who was indicted last year on charges related to a sexual assault in the 1970s, pleaded guilty on Tuesday just before jury selection for his trial was set to begin.A retired Roman Catholic priest who was indicted last year in Louisiana on charges related to the sexual assault of a teenage boy in the 1970s pleaded guilty to the crimes on Tuesday, his lawyer said, just before jury selection for the trial was set to begin.The retired priest, Lawrence Hecker, 93, pleaded guilty to state charges of first-degree rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, and theft over $500, said his lawyer, Bobby Hjortsberg. The charges came after allegations surfaced last year that the Archdiocese of New Orleans had known about accusations against Mr. Hecker for decades.“Him ultimately taking responsibility for it was the right thing to do, and the necessary thing to do at this point,” Mr. Hjortsberg said. “I hope everybody involved can move forward in whatever way is best for them.”The guilty plea did not include a plea deal, Mr. Hjortsberg said. Mr. Hecker is set to be sentenced on Dec. 18, and he faces life in prison.Mr. Hecker’s trial had been delayed multiple times over concerns about his mental competency, and because the judge recused himself over a conflict with prosecutors. The new judge, Nandi Campbell of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, ordered Mr. Hecker to undergo physical and psychological evaluations before trial. Mr. Hjortsberg confirmed that the retired priest had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia.The charges against Mr. Hecker came months after The Guardian reported that he confessed to his superiors in 1999 that he had sexually molested or committed other forms of sexual misconduct against multiple teenagers in the 1960s and ’70s. Mr. Hecker later confirmed to The Guardian and the New Orleans news outlet WWL-TV that he had committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three underage boys.Mr. Hecker continued to serve with the New Orleans archdiocese until his retirement in 2002. But the archdiocese did not publicly identify him as an accused sexual predator until 2018, when it released a list of “credibly accused” priests.Thousands of Catholic priests have been accused of misconduct since the sexual abuse crisis in the American Catholic Church exploded into public view in the early 2000s. But relatively few have faced criminal prosecution. In September, a Catholic priest in Texas was indicted on felony sexual assault charges after several victims accused him of sexual and financial abuse.The New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2020 amid a flood of abuse claims, and it is among about a dozen dioceses and archdioceses that are currently in bankruptcy proceedings.In a statement on Tuesday after Mr. Hecker’s guilty plea, a spokesman for the archdiocese said that it was the church’s “hope and prayer that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse.” More

    • 50 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s Charity Toward None

      by

      The cardinal should go to confession.Timothy Dolan let a white-tie charity dinner in New York showcase that most uncharitable of men, Donald Trump.At the annual Al Smith dinner, Dolan suffused the impious Trump in the pious glow of Catholic charities. Dolan looked on with a doting expression as Trump made his usual degrading, scatological comments about his foils, this time cloaked as humor.“We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child,” Trump told the New York fat cats. “It’s a person who has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”Trump also offered this beauty: “I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying that men have periods. But then I met Tim Walz.” When Trump joked about keeping Doug Emhoff away from nannies, even he admitted it was “too tough.”As he did in 2016 when he crudely attacked Hillary Clinton as she sat on the dais, Trump added a rancid cloud to what used to be a good-tempered bipartisan roast.Dolan could have stood up and told Trump “Enough!” We have been longing for that voice of authority who could deliver the Joseph Welch line — “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” — to our modern Joe McCarthy. It is the church’s job, after all, to teach right from wrong.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More