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KRAKOW, Poland, July 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The head of the Polish bishops conference says that in a private meeting this week Pope Francis held with the country’s bishops, he spoke of allowing local bishops conferences to make decisions about the controversial practice of giving Communion to those who are divorced and remarried. “The Holy Father says that general laws are very hard to enforce in each country, and so he speaks about decentralization,” Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki told reporters after a July 27 closed-door meeting with the Pope in Krakow. The pope had traveled to Poland for World Youth Day....

The diocese of San Jose is saying its LGBT ministry will not "elaborate" on Church teaching on "sexual morality, conscience, and personal sin," while claiming that gay people can't change their sexual orientation. The document "Guidelines for the Catholic LGBT Ministry Council" bears the name of Bp. Patrick J. McGrath and is the guide by which Catholic parishes are to deal with LGBT people. It maintains from the outset that the guidelines "do not presume any particular social or psychological analysis of sexuality in our society, except for a generally accepted premise that individuals do not choose and cannot change...

Czestochowa, Poland, Jul 28, 2016 / 04:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Those who embrace their own littleness become the “spokespersons” of God, Pope Francis said during Mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, celebrating the 1050 anniversary of Poland becoming a Christian nation. It was the first major event of the Pope's trip to the country for the 31st World Youth Day.“To be attracted by power, by grandeur, by appearances, is tragically human,” the pontiff said in his homily. “But to give oneself to others, eliminating distances, dwelling in littleness and living the reality of one’s everyday life:...

Despite some reports expecting Pope Francis to criticize Polish bishops on their approach to immigration and other issues at tonight’s meeting in Krakow, the atmosphere was “very warm” and the Pope listened to their concerns, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference has said. One of those concerns relates to ambiguous passages in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and the need for their clarification — a matter that the bishops raised with the Pope, according to sources. Speaking to reporters at the end of the Pope’s first day in Poland, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki said the issue of migrants and...

"The apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, issued by Pope Francis on March 19th 2016 and addressed to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, Christian married couples, and all the lay faithful, has caused grief and confusion to many Catholics on account of its apparent disagreement with a number of teachings of the Catholic Church on faith and morals. This situation poses a grave danger to souls.” So begins the 13-page document sent by an international group of Catholic theologians, pastors, historians, and scholars “to every one of the Cardinals and Patriarchs, of whom there are 218 living at present.” Though the document...

Announcement highlights tensions between Francis and Polish hierarchy after closed door meeting last night A senior bishop has said that the Church in Poland will refuse communion to divorced and remarried Catholics despite the landmark family document from Pope Francis which opened up the possibility. Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, said that giving communion could not be allowed following a period of pastoral discernment - something which Francis has advocated - adding that if remarried divorcees had a valid first marriage they cannot receive the eucharist. His remarks came just hours after the Pope’s arrival...

Francis has arrived in Poland at the start of World Youth Day 2016Pope Francis has urged Poles to show compassion to migrants, after arriving in Kraków for World Youth Day. Cloudy skies and a light drizzle did little to dampen the spirits of pilgrims cheering loudly as the Pope’s plane landed in Kraków on July 27. The arrival ceremony at Kraków’s John Paul II International Airport was marked by the presence of hundreds of Polish men and women, dressed in traditional clothes and dancing. Stepping down from his plane and before he departed for Wawel Castle, Pope Francis was greeted...

The Pope spoke to reporters on his flight to Poland for World Youth DayPope Francis says the world is at war, but has stressed that it’s not a war of religions. Francis spoke to reporters on the papal plane en route from Rome to Poland, where he began a five-day visit for World Youth Day. Asked about the slaying of an 85-year-old priest in a Normandy church on Tuesday, Francis replied: “the real word is war…yes, it’s war. This holy priest died at the very moment he was offering a prayer for all the church.” He added: “I only want...

Warsaw (AFP) - A portrait of Pope Francis hanging in Warsaw's St. Saviour Church is flanked by another, much larger one, showing the smiling late Polish-born pontiff and saint, John Paul II. In Poland, Karol Wojtyla is still "The Pope". Experts say Francis will have a hard time winning over hearts and minds in the devout central European country as he arrives Wednesday for his first visit, part of the week-long World Youth Day faith extravaganza. While Poland shunned refugees over alleged security risks amid Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II, Francis encouraged open doors and charity for...

RICHMOND, Virginia, July 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-abortion Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine received a standing ovation at his parish on Sunday and several Catholic priests praised his nomination. Meanwhile, as Catholics call for Kaine to be denied Communion in accord with the Church’s laws, his bishop in the Diocese of Richmond has issued a statement saying that Catholics have a duty to determine their own worthiness “through an upright and informed conscience.” Kaine and his wife were “like every other married couple going to church on a Sunday morning — if every other couple were met by...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 25, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic priest asked that pro-abortion Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine “do us both a favor” and not show up in his Communion line. “I take Canon 915 seriously. It'd be embarrassing for you & for me,” tweeted Dominican Father Thomas Petri, the vice president and academic dean of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies. Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law instructs that those “persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,...

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has decided to scrap a previously scheduled official discourse to Polish bishops on the first day of his apostolic journey to Poland, in favour of a private encounter with them during which the Pope and the bishops will be able to listen to each other and converse in total freedom. Speaking to Vatican Radio, Father Federico Lombardi SJ, Director of the Holy See Press Office, explained that the Pope wants the occasion to be as spontaneous and authentic as possible: a moment in which the bishops and the Pope will be at ease and free to...

L’Osservatore Romano has published a defense of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia by Rodrigo Guerra López, a philosopher at the Center for Advanced Social Research in Queretaro, Mexico. Stating that “it is not strange to find resistance when Christian thought takes a new step forward,” López writes that the controversy over Amoris Laetitia recalls earlier controversies over whether the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on religious liberty was faithful to the teaching of Leo XIII and whether St. John Paul II’s use of phenomenology was in accord with the Church’s philosophical tradition. “Amoris laetitia is a true act of pontifical...

The pope has issued “new guidelines” for contemplative nuns, and it has set off every one of my alarms, long, loud and terrifying as an air raid siren. It is possibly one of the most sinister things I've seen coming from Bergoglio thus far, but I think few people will understand how serious it is or could be. Hardly anyone gives a moment’s thought to cloistered nuns. Once they’re inside, the world forgets about them. But contemplative religious life is like the mitochondria of the Church. The power source of the cell that makes all the other systems function. The...

L to R:Bishop Gregory Mansour, Mother Marla Marie, Bechara Cardinal Rai, and 2 member of the community Marla Lucas had just graduated from college and was ready to embark on a career in journalism. But, as often happens, someone came along whose deeply magnetic personality led her to change her plans.“Jesus made it clear to me that my life was meant to be offered as a consecrated religious to serve his people,” she said. “I was captivated by His love and drawn deeply to let go, leave all things and to follow him.”After a year of discernment, Lucas entered a...

An until now unpublished list of names attached to a critique of Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on family life shows the signatories to include professors at diocesan seminaries, a member of a pontifical academy, and the head of the church's ecclesiastical structure in Afghanistan. The signatories had sent a letter to the world's Catholic cardinals asking them to "respond to the dangers to Catholic faith and morals" from Francis' Amoris Laetitia ("The Joy of Love") The letter, which attracted press coverage earlier in the month as a possible sign of wider disagreement with Amoris Laetitia, was sent to Italian Cardinal...

The solution to racial war. All lives matter, but the problem is sin, not skin (though aspects of cultural can be sinful). The Cross and the Switchblade movie (1969, copyright Dick Ross and associates, and which can be seen here) is about the true story which is told in the book, the Cross and the Switchblade written in 1962. The movie (which mostly used local talent) stars Pat Boone as David Wilkerson and Erik Estrada as Nicky Cruz, the teen gang member whose life was dramatically transformed by Christ. Nicky was the leader of the notorious Brooklyn Puerto Rican gang...

John Nienstedt, the former archbishop of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul, said accusations of sexual misconduct against him were part of a false smear campaign in response to his opposition to gay marriage. Nienstedt’s denial came in a statement Wednesday night, first issued to KSTP and Minnesota Public Radio. That followed the release of internal church documents alleging the Vatican had sought to derail an independent investigation that turned up credible evidence against him. Nienstedt resigned last year as archbishop and returned to his home state of Michigan. He was briefly involved with a diocese there but left...

Every institute of contemplative women religious will have to revise its constitutions in light of the new documentIn an effort to help contemplative women religious renew their life and mission in the Church and the world, Pope Francis has issued a series of new rulings dealing with formation, assets, prayer life, authority and autonomy. The new rulings include a mandate that “initially, all monasteries are to be part of a federation” based on “an affinity of spirit and traditions” with the aim of facilitating formation and meeting needs through sharing assets and exchanging members. Monasteries voting for an exception from...

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois, July 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic bishop simultaneously skewered those celebrating supposed changes in Church doctrine and defended a fellow bishop who instructed Catholics in his diocese to follow the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. Responding to a “misleading” Associated Press article that ran in Illinois' State Journal-Register, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, wrote in the same newspaper that the guidelines Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput issued on proper disposition to receive Holy Communion “are certainly correct” because they uphold Biblical teaching. The AP article pitted Chaput’s actions against Pope Francis. The article said Chaput "is...