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(Vatican Radio) Catholic and Orthodox theologians are meeting in the Italian town of Chieti for the 14th plenary session of their international dialogue commission. The meeting from September 15th to 22nd brings together two representatives from each of the fourteen Orthodox Churches, alongside 28 Catholic participants, under the shared presidency of Cardinal Kurt Koch from the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and Archbishop Job of Telmessos from the Ecumenical Patriarchate.The meeting will focus on discussion of a draft document, drawn up at the previous two sessions, entitled “Towards a common understanding of Synodality and Primacy in service to the Unity of the Church”. Participants will also share moments of prayer together with local Christian communities, including a Mass in the cathedral of San Giustino in Chieti on Saturday and a Divine Liturgy at the shrine of the Holy Face in Manoppello on Sunday.To find out more about the meeting...
The sainthood conferred by Pope Francis on Mother Teresa of Calcutta on Sept. 4 here in the Vatican, was greeted with great enthusiasm and celebration across the globe, especially in India, but more specially in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, the capital of eastern India’s West Bengal state, that the Albania-born nun adopted as her home town. Among the estimated 120,000 faithful and admirers of Mother Teresa from across the world who were proud to be the first-hand witnesses of the canonization ceremony here in St. Peter's Square was Mr. Subrata Ganguly, a businessman from Kolkata. Mother Teresa and Mr. Ganguly have much more in common than just being from the same city. From his surname, Mr. Ganguly is a Hindu Brahmin, a non-Christian, but he is no stranger to Christian art. Perhaps he is more versed in Christian art than most Christians. A mechanical engineer turned businessman, Mr. Ganguly is the owner and CEO of Church Art, a uni...
(Vatican Radio) Bolivia’s new ambassador to the Holy See met Pope Francis on Thursday and presented his Letters of Credence. Married with 3 children, the 51 year old envoy has a Master Degree in Business Communications and another in Constitutional Law and previously served as Executive Director of the Latin American Institute of Knowledge.
(Vatican Radio) Valerie, a dynamic teenager from DRC whose family has found refuge in South Africa; Luwam, a dancer from Eritrea, and Wahida, an English teacher who fled Afghanistan are some of those telling their stories in a new series of Jesuit Refugee Service videos produced by the JRS “Mercy in Motion” campaign. Every week, as from Friday, 16 September, you can watch and listen to some uplifting, encouraging, sometimes sad or dramatic – but never – despairing stories of refugees from across the globe on Vatican Radio’s English Facebook page.At a moment in time in which an unprecedented 65 million people are on the move in search of a safe place, peace and a decent, better future, these videos aim to contribute to a better understanding of who “refugees” are and why – as Pope Francis has said many times – it is important to build bridges and not walls, and that inclusion and integration are not a threat, a...
Washington D.C., Sep 15, 2016 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- If the U.S. uses its moral authority' to pressure Vietnam on human rights issues, the southeast Asian country will change for the better, religious freedom advocates maintained at a conference on Monday.“Vietnam wants to be part of the world, and I’m sure it does. It needs to not treat religious liberty as the poor sister of the human rights family, or worse, as the eccentric uncle of the human rights family,” Kristina Arriaga, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated at a Sept. 12 event hosted by the Hudson Institute on religious freedom in Vietnam.“Without religious freedom, no other right exists,” she added.The freedom of citizens to practice their religion in Vietnam “varies,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted in its 2016 annual report, because while “the government has made dramatic openings with respec...
By Rhina GuidosWASHINGTON (CNS) -- Can you put a dollar value on religion? OneGeorgetown University researcher has attempted something close to it, releasingfindings from a study that says organized religion and behaviors associatedwith it contribute, by one estimate, nearly $1.2 trillion to the United States.Brian Grim, of the Religious Liberty Project at GeorgetownUniversity, unveiled on Sept. 14 findings of a study he conducted with MelissaGrim, of the Newseum Institute, and which analyzed the economic impact of344,000 religious congregations, "from Adventist to Zoroastrians," around thecountry.Depending on which factors one considers, religioncontributes $378 billion, by the most conservative of estimates, and up to $4.8 trillion tothe U.S. annually, Brian Grim said of the study sponsored by Faith Counts, anonprofit organization of religious groups, whose aim is promoting the value of faith.University of Pennsylvania professor Ram Cnaan, who also is program director for the Pro...
By Cindy WoodenVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In a change to church law, Latin-riteCatholic deacons may not preside at a wedding when one or both of the newspouses are members of an Eastern Catholic church.The new rule is one of the changes to 11 canons in theLatin-rite Code of Canon law that Pope Francis approved in order to harmonize the lawsof the Latin and Eastern Catholic churches on several issues involving thesacraments of baptism and marriage.After more than 15 years of study and worldwideconsultation, the conflicting rules were resolved by adopting the Easterncode's formulations for the Latin church as well, said Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of thePontifical Council for Legislative Texts.The bishop spoke to journalists Sept. 15 after thepublication of an apostolic letter published "motu proprio" (on hisown initiative) in which Pope Francis ordered the changes to the Latin Code ofCanon Law, the 1983 text governing the majority of the world's Catholics.In the Eastern Cathol...
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- "South Park" has taken on the controversy over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protest....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama said Thursday that he created the Atlantic Ocean's first national monument because the planet cannot be protected without trying to safeguard its oceans....
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An officer responding to a reported armed robbery shot and killed a 13-year-old boy when the teen pulled a firearm from his waistband that was later determined to be a BB gun but looked "practically identical" to the weapon that police use, authorities said Thursday....
