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For the next four years at least, central Piazza Venezia and its Imperial Forum-flanked boulevard to the Colosseum are scheduled to be congested and blighted by giant, 14-meter high green silos that are needed for theonstruction site of a major underground hub in central Piazza Venezia in Rome May 9. (AP/Alessandra Tarantino)
Vatican News

Vatican and Rome begin dash to 2025 Jubilee with papal bull, construction

Vatican

In an official edict May 9, Pope Francis described his vision for the 2025 Jubilee as a year of hope. He asked for gestures of solidarity for the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.

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Focus

Pope Francis greets people as he rides the popemobile around St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 25. Francis sent a brief letter to Drachma Parents April 30, responding to their criticism of a Vatican document that condemned gender theory and gender-affirming surgeries. Their original letter to Francis was dated April 23. (CNS/Lola Gomez)

In Focus

Pope responds with 'open heart' to Vatican document criticism from parents of LGBTQ children

Pope Francis has written to a group of parents of LGBTQ persons, responding to their criticism of a Vatican document that condemned gender theory and gender-affirming surgeries. He told them he received their critique with an "open heart."

Most Read Stories

The interior of the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan, New York (NCR photo/Camillo Barone)

#1
New York's St. Francis Xavier redefines acceptance in the Catholic Church

Explore the social justice and spiritual journey of Church of St. Francis Xavier, where inclusion, compassion and social outreach thrive, from celebrating LGBTQ lives to serving the homeless.

ByCamillo Barone
Pope Francis, seated, smiles while listening to Maeve Heaney speak.
Vatican News

#2
Church needs theologians who grapple with modern world, pope says

"Tradition is living" and not stagnant, Pope Francis wrote, and it must continually shape and take root in every part of the world and in every culture. 

ByCindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
The steeples of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church in Cleveland (Dennis Sadowski)

#3
Cleveland priest at center of Vatican II altar damage previously accused of abuse

The diocesan priest named in a controversy over damage to a Vatican II altar in Cleveland was on leave from the priesthood for a decade following allegations of sexual abuse, before being reinstated to ministry in 2012.

ByDennis Sadowski

#4
'A step back in time': America's Catholic Church sees an immense shift toward the old ways

#5
Catholicism must reject 'heresy of triumphalism,' says noted Czech priest

#6
Pope urges reparation to the Sacred Heart, including for abuse crisis

Opinion

Polling disparities between Biden and popular Dems highlight opportunity for party

NCR Voices

Excommunication is not the church's equivalent of capital punishment

Guest Voices
Janet Robinson and her memoir, It Looked This Way to Me (Courtesy of Luminare Press; background photo: Wikimedia Commons/Arnaud Fafournoux)

Mrs. Robertson's memoir spotlights the life of an (extra)ordinary person

NCR Voices

NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters' childhood Latin teacher shares the struggles as well as the joys of her life in this compelling and consoling memoir.

Brave new transhuman world? Ethical questions to consider amid AI advances

Guest Voices

Your letters: Bishop Gumbleton, Word on Fire, women's ordination

Letters to the Editor
Demonstrators hold signs and chant slogans in Atlanta March 9, 2023, during a protest over plans to build a new $109.6 million, 85-acre police training center. (AP/Alex Slitz)

'Cop cities' are on the rise. Catholics should be concerned.

Guest Voices

For Catholics, the massive investments into police training facilities across the United States raise questions about how our governments are aligning resources to meet the needs of the vulnerable — or not.

Vatican

For the next four years at least, central Piazza Venezia and its Imperial Forum-flanked boulevard to the Colosseum are scheduled to be congested and blighted by giant, 14-meter high green silos that are needed for theonstruction site of a major underground hub in central Piazza Venezia in Rome May 9. (AP/Alessandra Tarantino)
Vatican News

Vatican and Rome begin dash to 2025 Jubilee with papal bull, construction

In an official edict May 9, Pope Francis described his vision for the 2025 Jubilee as a year of hope. He asked for gestures of solidarity for the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.

Pope Francis greets Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann, an Australian Aboriginal elder, educator and artist, after his weekly general audience May 31, 2023, in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Looking on is Chiara Porro, Australian ambassador to the Holy See. (CNS/Lola Gomez)
Vatican News

Vatican has made progress on listening to women, says Australian diplomat

Listen: In this episode of The Vatican Briefing, Australia's ambassador to the Vatican, Chiara Porro, says the global Catholic Church is making progress in hearing women's viewpoints.

ByChristopher White, Joshua J. McElwee
Pope Francis and Brother Leo arrive at the G7 conference on artifical intelligence.
Francis, the comic strip

Francis, the comic strip

Francis, the comic strip: There are some blanks in AI knowledge.

ByPat Marrin
Pope Francis pictured in profile kissing pectoral cross held by aide.
Vatican News

Vatican norms for Jubilee indulgence include pilgrimage, penance, service

Pilgrims passing through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica during the Holy Year 2025, going to confession, receiving Communion and praying for the intentions of the pope can receive an indulgence, but so can inmates in prison and those who work to defend human life or assist migrants and refugees.

ByCindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Vatican News

Pope again calls for full prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine

Vatican News

Vatican Museums staff challenge the pope with a legal bid for better terms and treatment

Vatican News

NY mayor hails Pope Francis as global 'influencer' ahead of Vatican meeting

Climate change activists in San Francisco paint a mural during a protest outside of BlackRock headquarters Oct. 29, 2021, ahead of the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference. (CNS/Reuters/Nathan Frandino)
Science

Climate change is affecting mental health literally everywhere

A recent summit organized by the Connecting Climate Minds network brought together hundreds of scientists, doctors, community leaders and other experts from dozens of countries who have spent the past year studying how climate change is harming mental health in their regions.

Residents wade through flood waters as they recover their belongings in the Mathare Valley settlement of Nairobi, Kenya, April 24, after the Nairobi River burst its bank.
Faith

Kenya's Catholic bishops call on government for urgent response to floods

The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops has called for "swift action" and "generous acts of charity" to mitigate effects of flooding that has so far left more than 250 people dead and a trail of property damage.

ByIan Byron
"Food Program in Guatemala" by Oblate of St. Francis de Sales Br. Mickey McGrath
Viewpoints

3 female saints teach that Earth is our common mother and home

I have taken a fresh look at our concept of the Earth as humanity's common mother and home. Some of my favorite women saints have inspired me with new levels of awareness and understanding. 

ByMickey McGrath
Priest and parishioners work in sunny garden.
Faith

Prayer garden at Arizona Catholic church nurtures the soul

One year ago St. James the Apostle Church in Coolidge stood in a sea of concrete, asphalt and gravel. Waves of heat streamed off sunbaked surfaces that blinded parishioners as they dashed from their cars to the shelter of the church.

ByCarissa Krautscheid, OSV News

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Faith

Despite economic interests, society must embrace social justice, pope says

Viewpoints

Holy See should champion Action for Climate Empowerment fund at COP29

Faith

How ‘apocalypse’ became a secular as well as religious idea

Culture

A bust at China's Nihewan Museum celebrating Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin overlooks the vast valley still under excavation.

New Teilhard de Chardin film produces thoughtful, inspiring biography

"Teilhard: Visionary Scientist," which debuts on Maryland PBS May 19, creates "the portrait of a man who was at once prophet, priest, Jesuit, scientist and mystic," writes Sr. Rose Pacatte. 

The Gordon B. Lankton Gallery located in the upper level of the Icon Museum and Study Center in Clinton, Massachusetts, the only museum in the United States devoted to icons and Eastern Christian art. (Michael Centore)

Icon Museum and Study Center fosters spiritual and aesthetic contemplation

The Icon Museum and Study Center is a U.S. museum devoted to icons and Eastern Christian art. Walking through the galleries spread over three levels was as much a prayerful experience as an aesthetic one.

ByMichael Centore
"The Artist's Daughter, Julie, with her Nanny" (circa 1884) by the French Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) (Artvee)
Book Reviews

New book celebrates 'revolution of tenderness' mother artists create

Catherine Ricketts' The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity is an excavation of the many questions, frustrations and, ultimately, gifts of a culture that welcomes mothers who make art. 

ByElizabeth Hamilton
A still from the first chapter of “Hermanas de Corazón” (Sisters of the Heart), a Spanish-language documentary on Venerable Mary Lange and her Oblate Sisters of Providence's work in Cuba

Film on Oblate Sisters of Providence's Cuban ministry now streaming

The founder of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, Venerable Mary Lange, was raised in Cuba before coming to America. A 2021 film explores the Oblates' work there after Lange's death. 

ByNate Tinner-Williams, Black Catholic Messenger

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

New film 'Irena's Vow' highlights the bravery of a historical Catholic figure

Jedi heresy on Star Wars Day: Wrong, Yoda was

What 'Bluey' teaches us about times of spiritual desolation

Sr. Lourdes Mary Rozario teaches and supervises a class in the Mohammadpur area of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Congregation of Our Lady of the Missions Sisters started the Green Herald Evening Charity School program for Bihari children in 1982. (Photo by Stephan Uttom Rozario)

Sisters play a vital role in educating Muslim Bihari refugees in Bangladesh

Biharis, the majority of which are Urdu-speaking Muslims, have challenges when it comes to education and understanding the Bengali language. Highly educated Biharis make up less than 2% of the refugee camp population in Dhaka. 

Detail of a 16th-century Portuguese painting of Pentecost by an unknown artist (Wikimedia Commons/Jose Goncalves)

What would change in a church united through the Holy Spirit? Everything!

At the first Pentecost, the desire of God "that all may be one" came about through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us ponder another area in which this prophecy could be and should be fulfilled: the Catholic Church.

By
Columns

Angels on the road

Through her encounters with migrants fleeing violence and extortion, and crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico, Sr. Clara Malo Castrillón found parallels with the Book of Tobit, written 2,000 years ago.

By
woman holds large shell to her ear

Listen to the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit

"We may have an inspiration or insight during prayer or in the course of the day," writes Sr. Lissy Maruthanakuzhy. "Let us not dismiss it … Stop and try to act on it. It might be the Holy Spirit leading us."

ByLissy Maruthanakuzhy

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Hope and resilience among sisters in Tanzania

Sisters provide crucial support for Haitians in the midst of crisis

2 visionary women, much like you and me

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