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Traditionalist priests now account for 20 per cent of ordinations in FranceThe number of new ordinations in France has fallen this year, from 133 in 2017 to 114. According to figures from La Croix, 82 of these new priests are diocesan, while the rest are members of various orders and societies of apostolic life. Paris and Bordeaux are the dioceses with most ordinations – six each – however, this still marks a considerable decline for Paris, which had 10 in 2017 and 11 in 2016. Lyon, Versailles and Fréjus-Toulon follow with five each, then Evry with four. However, a total...

Cardinal Cupich has been holding seminars on implementing Amoris Laetitia. These “New Momentum Conferences” will “provide formative pastoral programs.” I wonder whether these seminars will include anything for reluctantly divorced persons. No one else seems to be doing anything for abandoned spouses. Perhaps Cardinal Cupich and his friends will step up to the plate.The public, including many Catholics, has the impression that no-fault divorce allows two sensible and mature adult people to agree to end their marriage. We imagine that the state must not interfere in this mutual decision. No one should cry over the spilt milk of a “dead...

A Pre-Lenten Preparation for Priests and a Request for Prayers from the Faithful Msgr. Charles Pope • February 12, 2018 • Priests need to prepare for Lent too. The Book of the Prophet Malachi provides a kind of mini-examen for them.As we consider the sins of the priests enumerated below, please understand that neither the biblical text nor my commentary should be construed as meaning that all or even most priests are like this. Sadly, though, sins and shortcomings are far too common among the clergy. As priests must strive to be better and more holy, so must the...

The cardinal who heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy suggests in a new book that the Catholic Church should consider ordaining married men in some cases. The Church shouldn’t be “closed or rigid” as it considers this topic, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy Cardinal Beniamino Stella wrote in Italian in All Francis’ Men, just released Monday. The Catholic Herald first translated Stella’s proposition. In remote places “there is acute suffering because of a real ‘sacramental emergency,’ which the few priests present are not able to accommodate,” Stella wrote. “Continuing to maintain their family and jobs and receiving...

“But now I shall tell you God’s will in this matter……Know this too: that if some pope concedes to priests a license to contract carnal marriage, God will condemn him to a sentence as great, in a spiritual way, as that which the law justly inflicts in a corporeal way on a man who has transgressed so gravely that he must have his eyes gouged out, his tongue and lips, nose and ears cut off, his hands and feet amputated, all his body’s blood spilled out to grow completely cold, and finally, his whole bloodless corpse cast out to be...

Pope Francis has requested that Roman Catholic priests be given the right to get married. The request applies to priests in Brazil, and is on the agenda for an upcoming synod (church council) in the Amazon region. The controversial move would address the critical shortage of men joining the priesthood

According to the Austrian Catholic website Kath.net, Pope Francis is considering allowing the ordination of so-called viri probati. These “tested men” are said to have “proved their worth” by living virtuously in their marriages and in parish life, indicating a proposed relaxation of the requirement of celibacy in the priesthood for these men who would assist in the duties of celibate priests, including the offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Based on a report in the German newspaper Die Zeit, kath.net says that the promoter of the idea of married priests, Bishop Erwin Kräutler — an Austrian-born prelate who has spent...

At a memorial Mass this week for a Cameroon bishop who died under mysterious circumstances, a cleric who's taken over as the administrator of the diocese charged that the authors of the murder were in the church, "pretending to sympathize," and that the bishop died for standing up against gays in the priesthood.YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon - Ever since the body of Bishop Jean Marie Benoit Bala of Bafia, Cameroon, was discovered in a local river about four miles from where his car had been abandoned, questions have abounded about his death - was it suicide, as the police allege, or a...

Francis Names New Director For Battered Roman Seminary Father Gabriele Faraghini, a Little Brother of Jesus, was named as the new rector of the Seminario Romano where the new priests of the Diocese of Rome are formed. Liberal media calls this enthusiastically "a decision without precedents" in line with Francis' poverty ideology. The Seminario Romano is in a crisis because, like all seminaries run by liberals, it is not attractive for young men who desire to join the priesthood. This year Francis ordained only six men for his diocese of which only three were Romans. In 2015 the diocese ordained...

The man who leads the largest Roman Catholic Church in America is advocating that the church allow married men to become priests, and plans to spend his retirement ministering among the poorest of the poor.Monsignor John McSweeney, 75, who is originally from New York, is concluding 43 years of ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he has most recently served as priest at St. Matthew in Ballantyne, an affluent suburb of the state's most populous city.St. Matthew Catholic Church is the largest Roman Catholic parish in the United States which boasts of over 10,000 families, according to The Charlotte Observer Sunday.Much...

A pair of Swedish priests has demanded the country and church stop celebrating the Swedish national holiday “National Day” saying nationalism and patriotism are “poison”. Priests Peter Englund and Helena Myrstener from the southern, heavily migrant-populated Swedish city of Malmö have said Swedish people should stop celebrating “National Day”. They claim that “nothing good has come out of nationalism or patriotism” and the day has been “exploited by right wing populist forces” in an editorial for left wing Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “The nation-state is a way to organise and administer but nothing to revere,” the pair wrote. National Day,...

When 19 college guys go to Jamaica for spring break, they usually hit the bar and the beach. Not Nicholas Morrison and his friends. Their trip to Montego Bay this March was far more medieval. Every morning they rose at 5:30 a.m. and prayed. Then they visited abandoned children with disabilities and dug an irrigation trench to protect the kids’ homes from flooding in the coming summer rains.

A rebel Catholic group has ordained its second woman priest in North Carolina, the first in the 46 counties that constitute the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. News outlets report that the Association of Roman Catholic Woman Priests ordained 64-year-old Abigail Eltzroth on Sunday at Asheville's Jubilee, a nondenominational faith community. The group is opposed to the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women priests.

Lately, Chavez declared himself a member of a charismatic congregation, thus allegedly belonging to his country's fastest-growing branch of Christianity. But then he angered the country's National Catholic Bishops Conference by communing at a Mass organized by a priest of pro-Communist leanings. Should you have any doubt that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is in serious decline, consider this: His bust is being removed from the altars of his country's popular religion, a renowned anthropologist told United Press International on Monday. Less than four years ago, the syncretistic Maria Lionza cult celebrated Chavez as the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar, (1783-1830),...

A priest was thought to be missing. His car was found parked and people did know where he was. He was lost and was new to United States. He was using another priest's car whom he had driven to the airport. The priest, Father Julius Ohiaege of Nigeria, was taking the place of the priest he had driven to the Lafayette, Louisiana airport. He was to substitute for the priest at St Leo the Great parish in Leonville. Links to stories on this (which are quite confusing as some still has the priest as being missing): KLFY (CBS News): Priest...

Pope Francis has said he is open to married men becoming priests to combat the Roman Catholic Church's shortage of clergy. In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit, Pope Francis said the lack of Catholic priests was an "enormous problem" for the Church, and indicated he would be open to a change in the rules governing eligibility for the priesthood. "We need to consider if 'viri probati' could be a possibility," he said. "If so, we would need to determine what duties they could undertake, for example, in remote communities." Viri probati is the Latin term for "tested men"...

Lurid accusations of priests involved in sex orgies, porn videos and prostitution have emerged from several parishes in Italy recently, sending shock waves all the way to the Vatican and challenging the high standards Pope Francis demands of clergy. In the southern city of Naples, for example, a priest was recently suspended from the parish of Santa Maria degli Angeli over claims he held gay orgies and used Internet sites to recruit potential partners whom he paid for sex.

Pope Francis says he is concerned about what he calls a “hemorrhage” of priests and nuns from the Catholic church. […] First among the factors he cited as causing nuns and priests to quit their vocations is a society that discourages lifelong commitments. Francis lamented that many conduct their lives based on “à la carte” choices. …

Bill Donohue comments on the resignation of David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP): He said he “voluntarily resigned” last month, but that is an incomplete, if not dishonest, account. Had it not been for a string of lawsuits and bad publicity, he would have stayed for years. He will now be remembered for running when the going got tough, leaving behind a shell of an organization that is broken both morally and financially. Clohessy is a man who spent a good part of his adult life attacking the Catholic Church and lying...

Father Chad Ripperger and his order are being welcomed by Bp. Samuel AquilaDENVER (ChurchMilitant.com) - A traditional group of exorcist priests, the Doloran Fathers, also known as the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother, are moving their ministry to Denver. News of the move has been circulating on blogs and has been confirmed by those close to the Doloran Fathers. Neither the archdiocese of Denver nor the Dolorans themselves have yet to release an official statement. Father Chad Ripperger, founder of the Dolorans, was asked to leave the Tulsa, Oklahoma diocese in September 2016, shortly after Bp. David Konderla was...