Categorized Under: World News
Priest Commits Suicide After Masturbating on Beach
A Polish Salesian priest who was charged with masturbating before minors on a beach in Poland has committed suicide. Father Piotr Ziółkowski, a catechist at a primary school and priest at Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Szczecin, northwestern Poland, was found dead on Saturday after he threw himself in front of a train. Read more
Top Cardinal Warns of Synodality as ‘Pandora’s Box’
A leading cardinal is warning that the forthcoming Synod on Synodality is "a revolution" that is at work "to change radically the Church's self-understanding in accord with a contemporary ideology which denies much of what the Church has always taught and practiced." In a foreword to a new book titled The Synodal Process Is a Pandora's Box: 100 Questions & Answers, Cdl. Raymond Burke notes that "synodality," which is set to redefine Catholicism, "has no history in the doctrine of the Church" and "no reasonable definition." Read more
Pope Picks Brothel-Scandal Judge for Vatican Body
A pro-abortion and pro-LGBT Argentinian former supreme court judge who was investigated for renting out his apartments as a brothel has been appointed by Pope Francis to a Vatican entity operating within the framework of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences. Justice Raúl Eugenio Zaffaroni, handpicked by the pontiff to serve on the newly created body dealing with social rights and colonialism, sparked further outrage after he exempted a pedophile from prison for abusing an eight-year-old girl. Read more
Syro-Malabar Priests Defy Excommunication Threat
"Any disobedience to this order will be considered voluntary, personal and culpable disobedience to the Holy Father," papal delegate Abp. Cyril Vasil warned priests of the Syro-Malabar Church's Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy in a letter published Thursday. Vasil said that defiance of the Vatican's diktat to implement the liturgical formula for the Holy Qurbana (Holy Mass) "will be considered a serious delict against the Holy Father with subsequent canonical penal sanctions." Read more
Oz Priest Shuffled to 16 Parishes Abused 72 Children
Magistrate Hugh Radford told Fr. Gerald Ridsdale that the priest would "probably die in custody" after reading out the serial abuser's extended sentence at Ballarat Magistrates' Court on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The verdict marks Ridsdale's 193rd conviction for child abuse and follows a guilty plea by the priest in June to the latest charge of indecent assault against a 13-year-old boy while the abuser worked at a Catholic school in Horsham in 1987. Read more
Oz Senator Urges Probe into Priests’ Hidden Children
An Australian senator is calling for a national inquiry into the children of Catholic priests after some priests' children reported that authorities were destroying or concealing records to prevent the offspring of clergy from tracking down their fathers. "There clearly needs to be an inquiry which has the power to compel the truth out of the Church," Sen. David Shoebridge from New South Wales told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday. Read more
Catholic Lawmaker Convicted for Anti-Trans Tweets
A prominent Catholic pro-lifer and former congressman has been found guilty of "gender-based political violence" for social media posts referring to a gender-dysphoric politician as a biological male. On Wednesday, Mexico's highest court for electoral issues convicted Rodrigo Iván Cortés for posts on Twitter and Facebook describing Salma Luévano, a member of the Chamber of Deputies — Mexico's lower house — as a "man who self-ascribes as a woman." Read more
Trads Face Prison for Protesting LGBT Mass in Lisbon
Twelve traditional Catholics could face up to a year in prison for protesting an LGBT Mass during World Youth Day in Portugal. Last Thursday at 3 p.m., Fr. José Manuel Valente da Silva Nunes, ex-prior of the Dominicans in Portugal, called police to evict traditionalists from the Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation in Ameixoeira, a district of Lisbon, as a Mass for "sexual minorities" was in progress. Read more
Pro-Lifer Calls Out ‘God In a Box’ at World Youth Day
A young pro-lifer is drawing attention to the disrespect shown to the Blessed Sacrament after consecrated hosts were stored in stacked boxes for adoration at the World Youth Day (WYD) celebrations last week. Savannah Dudzik from Florida, who flew to Lisbon to participate in the global Catholic youth event, said she was "infuriated" when she saw "God in a box" on Saturday evening after returning from a "praise session" featuring "liturgical dancing" at the Campo da Graça. Read more
Bishops Initiate Sainthood Process for Marxist Jesuit
The bishops' conference of El Salvador has begun the process for the canonization of Marxist liberation theologian Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría and his fellow Jesuits, who were murdered by the Salvadoran military junta three decades ago. "Our episcopal conference has begun the process of canonization of a large group of our martyrs who suffered the atrocities of the recent armed conflict in the country," the archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, announced during Holy Mass on Sunday. Read more
Trads Protest LGBT Eucharist at World Youth Day
Police were summoned to a church in Lisbon after a band of traditionalist Catholics picketed an LGBT Mass celebrated to welcome homosexual and transgender pilgrims at World Youth Day in Portugal. Carrying crucifixes and rosaries, a dozen traditionalist Catholic youth entered the Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation in Ameixoeira on Thursday around 3 p.m., chanting a "prayer of reparation" for the "mortal sins" that result from "an LGBT ideology in the Catholic Church." Read more
40 Priest Suicides Plague Brazil in 7-Year Nightmare
A Brazilian priest who specializes in psychological and pastoral approaches to preventing suicide and self-harm is raising the alarm at the Vatican following the suicides of at least 40 priests in Brazil over the past seven years. Loneliness, stress and excessive demands are driving priests to kill themselves, concludes Fr. Lício de Araújo Vale, from the diocese of São Miguel Paulista, after his extensive research into the ministries of the 40 priests who took their own lives between 2016 and 2023. Read more
Top Cardinal Blames Persecution on Ethnic Conflict
India's prominent cardinal, a key advisor to Pope Francis, is minimizing the Hindu nationalist persecution of Christians in India's northeastern state of Manipur by attributing the violence to ethnic rivalries. "This is a tribal conflict," Cdl. Oswald Gracias categorically asserted in a video statement released by the Archdiocese of Bombay on Wednesday. He added, "It is given a religious twist, but it is not a religious conflict between two religions. It is between two tribes." Read more
Italian Missionaries Refuse to Convert Amazon Tribe
Evangelical missionaries are planting churches in a remote Amazonian tribe while an Italian Catholic missionary order boasts it had not baptized a single indigenous person for 60 years. The Yanomami people practice infanticide, shamanism, and ritual cannibalism, but Italian missionary Fr. Corrado Dalmonego insists that the indigenous community could "help the Church to cleanse itself of schemes or mental structures, which may have become obsolete or inadequate." Read more
