Tag: Pope Francis
Pope Francis visited sacred sites recognized by Muslims, Christians, and Jews, including the Western Wall. He met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and a range of other religious leaders, made unexpected stops at a terror memorial and at the separation wall that surrounds the West Bank city of Bethlehem, and he inserted himself into the peace process with a surprise invitation to a prayer summit at the Vatican. More
“It’s not that religious leaders are in a position to take political initiatives. But they represent the identities of the people, and to ignore the possibilities of interreligious support is rather short-sighted.” More
“Focus on the idea that everybody’s narrative and every human being is worth so much in the eyes of God. Regardless of your state, or regardless of your faith, you have essence of dignity as a human being.” More
The Holy Land meeting of Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew should “reaffirm our commitment to the dialogue of love, to the dialogue of truth, and to a sense of unity moving toward a sense of communion.” More
“Pope John Paul II played a very important role in ending the Soviet era in Poland. I would like to see this pope saying, ‘The Holy Land did not experience peace for the last 3,000 years. Isn’t it overdue?'” More
“In the first thousand years of the Church about 80 popes were made saints. In the next 900 years, just three. There’s this renewed push now to make popes into saints, and that’s not always how it was done in the Church.” More
We take our annual look back at the top religion and ethics news of the year—Pope Francis and his priorities, such as helping the poor, and also churches divided over homosexuality and same-sex marriage. More
“He has given a higher priority to the church’s social teachings, to our obligations to the poor, and to criticism of an unjust economy than we have heard in a long time,” says Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne. More
For American Catholics, “the election of Kennedy was an important moment in history, where they were recognized and accepted by American society as true Americans,” says Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J. But anti-Catholicism continued to linger until JFK’s assassination, when the 34th president became an American martyr, and it was no longer acceptable to be anti-Catholic. More
This senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter says new US Conference of Catholic Bishops president Archbishop Kurtz is “not going to be just a simple culture warrior, I think he’s going to have more complexity to him.” More