Recent Editorial

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  China stifles underground Church as Vatican looks to extend pact

  Sep 19, 2020

  As the Vatican looks to extend its pact with China on bishops’ appointments, the Communist nation has accelerated efforts to arm-twist underground priests to join the state-sanctioned Open Church.

  
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  Fear of Sino-Vatican Agreement: Echoes of the Church and Hitler

  Sep 19, 2020

  The situation of the Church in China has become increasingly worse since the signing of the agreement. The concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933 gave the Church freedom for a few months. Then crucifixes were removed from the schools; Catholic associations were brought back under the Nazi party; everyone was obliged to study Nazism. Fritz Stern: The concordat with the Holy See boosted Hitler’s respectability in Germany and abroad.

  
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  The Global Economic Crisis

  Sep 19, 2020

  Since last December, a new coronavirus, COVID-19, has been putting our lives at risk. At the same time, it has paralysed most of our systems of production, the survival of which is now under threat. This unprecedented health emergency has triggered a very serious economic crisis, the depth of which will be determined by the duration of the pandemic.

  
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  Discussions and Discernment

  Sep 12, 2020

  One of the proposals that was most heatedly debated, both inside and outside the Synod hall, was the possibility of ordaining married men into the priesthood to try to address the shortage of priests in the Amazon region.

  
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  Francis is a discerning Pope, without a pre-set programme

  Sep 12, 2020

  Jesuit Fr Antonio Spadaro published an essay in La Civiltà Cattolica on Sept 5 examining the question “What kind of government does Francis exercise, and how do we interpret it in the light of these seven years?” As we await what will be the Holy Father’s second encyclical (not counting Lumen Fidei, which was largely written by Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict XVI), and the promulgation of the long-awaited apostolic constitution reforming the Vatican curia, the question could scarcely be more important.

  
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  Worldly gaze and Spiritual gaze

  Sep 12, 2020

  Today the temptation into which some commentators and analysts risk falling is to imagine a pope who builds a roadmap of institutional reforms, elaborated with a planning, functionalistic and organisational spirit.

  
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  The art of China’s Vatican deal

  Sep 05, 2020

  Next month, the 2018 Vatican-China deal expires. Those close to the negotiations, both in Rome and in Beijing, now confidently predict a one-year extension to the two-year deal to be agreed.

  
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  Pope Francis: Amazon synod was for discernment, not for fighting about married priests

  Sep 05, 2020

  Pope Francis did not approve a proposal to ordain married men in the Amazon region because the idea was discussed, and even argued about, but not prayerfully discerned at a 2019 synod of bishops, according to notes from the pope included in an article published Thursday in the Catholic periodical La Civiltà Cattolica.

  
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  Philippines joins global Christian effort to save nature

  Sep 05, 2020

  The Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP) has helped launch this year’s Season of Creation with an appeal to Catholics to renew their relationship with God and all creation.

  
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  Faith in the era of coronavirus

  Aug 29, 2020

  The coronavirus crisis is raising challenges and questions in all areas of life. It is no exception in the realm of religion and faith.