WARSAW, Poland (CNS) - Poland’s National Remembrance Institute has published a book of documents detailing how the communist secret police kept the future Pope John Paul II under surveillance and sought material for blackmailing him. An image of John Paul II. Photo: CNS “As a priest, lecturer and pastor, and later as a Bishop and Metropolitan of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla w...

Pope begins reform of Legionaries of Christ in wake of scandal Legionaries of Christ seminarians attend a conference on “A New Apologetics for a New Millennium” at Regina Apostolorum University in Rome on 29 April. Pope Benedict XVi has ordered a comprehensive overhaul of the Order, including a redefinition of its religious charism and the way authority is exercised amon...

God renews, does not reinvent Church: Benedict XVI   A ‘Clown Mass’ - one of the liturgical novelties that sprang up throughout the Western world, especially in America, during the 1970s and 80s as a response to misinterpreted Vatican II reforms of the liturgy.   By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY - The Catholic Church remai...

WHILE secular journalists have been using a sex-abuse case in the Munich Archdiocese in efforts to form a direct link to Pope Benedict XVI, emerging details of the case show clearly that the future pontiff was not involved in appointing the accused molester to do parish work. Archbishop Reinhard Marx Meanwhile, the Munich Archdiocese has suspended the priest at the centre of the ...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The Lenten season calls Christians to strip themselves of evil, superficiality and lukewarm morality and to turn themselves fully over to Jesus Christ, said Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Jozef Tomko sprinkles ashes on the head of Pope Benedict XVI during Ash Wednesday Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome on 17 February. Photo: CNS/Paul Haring “Co...

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY - The Catholic Church has a positive vision of human life, marriage and family which must not be presented as a list of things the Church opposes, Pope Benedict XVI told the Bishops of Scotland.        The Church’s “positive and inspiring vision of human life, the beauty of marriage and th...

The British government last week backed down from pursuing parts of its Equality Bill after Pope Benedict XVI condemned it as a threat to religious freedom.                                       ...

Visiting Rome synagogue, Pope honours memory of Holocaust victims Pope Benedict XVI greets Rabbi Elio Toaff, the former chief rabbi of Rome, during the Pope’s visit to the main synagogue in Rome on 17 January. Photo: CNS/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service ROME - Laying a wreath at a memorial to Roman Jews rounded up by the Na...

Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas Vigil Mass homily at the Vatican. It may just change your life. Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world, and all men and women, whom the Lord loves! “Lux fulgebit hodie super nos, quia natus est nobis Dominus. A light will shine on us this day, the Lord is born for us” (Roman Missal, Christmas, Entrance Antip...

Four servant-leaders are given esteemed Papal honour.     Monsignor Sean O’Shea, one of the four priests honoured by Pope Benedict, holds his papal medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice. The other priests honoured were Monsignor James Nestor, Fr Dan Foley and Fr Pat Cunningham. Photo: Anthony Barich.           ...