Members of the local organizing committee for World Youth Day say that, with the recent election of an Argentine pope, they expect up to 2.5 million young people at the international event in Rio de Janeiro.
Pope Francis visited the offices of the Vatican Secretariat of State April 12, thanking the employees for their hard work and for their dedication to the church.
Sudan’s security force expelled the secretary-general of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference and two other religious brothers.
The election of Pope Francis marks a new phase in the Catholic Church’s process of fully understanding, responding to and living out the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, said Cardinal Walter Kasper, who was part of the conclave that elected the new pope.
A Catholic Korean War chaplain who selflessly pulled wounded men from enemy fire and helped his fellow prisoners of war keep a sense of hope was honored posthumously with the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor, in an April 11 White House ceremony.
In a written greeting to members of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, Pope Francis said he was “deeply grateful” for their work against poverty and on behalf of peace.
Days before the Senate began debate over gun-control legislation, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., urged senators to support a bill that “builds a culture of life by promoting policies that reduce gun violence and saves people’s lives in homes and communities.”
Catholics need to know that marrying someone from a different Christian community or, even more so, from a different religion will create extra challenges in their marriage, but church leaders also must learn how to help people in mixed marriages meet those challenges, a Vatican official said.
President Barack Obama April 11 awarded the Medal of Honor to famed Korean War chaplain Father Emil Kapaun, presenting it to the priest’s nephew, Ray Kapaun, nearly 22,604 days after his uncle’s death in a prisoner of war camp.
Recognizing the inherent dignity of each person is the greatest weapon anyone has against war and violence, Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Blessed John XXIII’s encyclical “Pacem in Terris” (“Peace on Earth”).