All posts tagged: Vatican

In Vatican summit’s final document, delegates call for more lay and female church leaders

In Vatican summit’s final document, delegates call for more lay and female church leaders

Published by skeptic

VATICAN CITY (RNS) – After three years of discussions at every level of the Catholic Church, a summit of Catholic bishops and lay people at the Vatican ended Saturday (Oct. 26), with the publication of a document laying out a vision for structural reform of the church and calling for the hierarchy to make more room for lay leaders, especially women. The final document of Vatican Synod on Synodality presented pathways to a more inclusive and transparent church that gives all Catholics a say on the future of the institution. It proposed changes to canon law that would allow lay people to be better heard by their bishops, national bishops’ conferences and even the pope. The 52-page document serves as the final statement on the summit, which brought nearly 400 prelates, lay Catholics, nuns and brothers to Rome for the past month. Pope Francis announced that he will not publish an ‘apostolic exhortation’ as is customary at the end of a synod. The pope signed Saturday’s document instead, suggesting that it constitutes official church teaching. …

‘We were made to love and be loved,’ Pope Francis writes in latest encyclical

‘We were made to love and be loved,’ Pope Francis writes in latest encyclical

Published by skeptic

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Addressing a world faced with consumerism, division and artificial intelligence, Pope Francis urged faithful to “return to the heart” in his new encyclical, “Dilexit Nos” (“He Loved Us”), published on Thursday (Oct. 24). “In a word, if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fiber of our being, we were made to love and to be loved,” the pope wrote. This is the fourth encyclical by Pope Francis, following “Lumen Fidei,” co-written with his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI; the so-called green encyclical, “Laudato Si’”; and “Fratelli Tutti.” The pope announced the new document in June, the month traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The new document’s publication comes in the 350th anniversary year of the first visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1673. For 17 years, the French nun had visions of a fiery heart …

Zelenskyy meets Pope Francis at Vatican to discuss humanitarian situation in Ukraine

Zelenskyy meets Pope Francis at Vatican to discuss humanitarian situation in Ukraine

Published by skeptic

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Francis and his advisers at the Vatican on Friday (Oct. 11), where he said they discussed the hostage situation in Ukraine and the means to promote peace. The Vatican was the third stop of Zelenskyy’s 48-hour, four-city tour of Europe, after London and Paris, where he hopes to secure financial and political support for his “victory plan.” He met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday, and after the meeting with the pope, he left for Berlin on the same day. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to almost 1 million deaths, though reports vary according to the source. Many Ukrainians have been taken hostage by Russian forces, and Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna was reported to have died in a Moscow prison on Sept. 19. “The issue of our people returning home from captivity was the main issue during the meeting with Pope Francis. We count on the assistance of the Holy See in the return home of Ukrainians …

The pope urges Indonesia to live up to its promise of ‘harmony in diversity’

The pope urges Indonesia to live up to its promise of ‘harmony in diversity’

Published by skeptic

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Pope Francis urged Indonesia to live up to its promise of “harmony in diversity” and fight religious intolerance on Wednesday, as he set a rigorous pace for an 11-day, four-nation trip through tropical Southeast Asia and Oceania that will test his stamina and health. Despite the grueling itinerary, an energetic Francis joked and laughed his way through a packed first full day in Indonesia, meeting with outgoing President Joko Widodo and other Indonesian officials at the presidential palace and then greeting Catholic priests, nuns and seminarians at Jakarta’s main cathedral in the afternoon. Cannons boomed as Francis joined Widodo on the veranda of the palace along with President-elect Prabowo Subianto. A marching band, stiff-legged troops and children in traditional Indonesian dress welcomed the first pope to visit in 35 years. In his remarks to officials, Francis compared Indonesia’s human diversity to the archipelago’s 17,000 islands. He said each one contributes something specific to form “a magnificent mosaic, in which each tile is an irreplaceable element in creating a great original and …

Silicon Valley bishop, two Catholic AI experts weigh in on AI evangelization

Silicon Valley bishop, two Catholic AI experts weigh in on AI evangelization

Published by Sam

(RNS) — It took a little more than a day for Father Justin, an artificial intelligence avatar posing as a priest, to be defrocked. After Catholic Answers, a site devoted to evangelizing for Catholicism, introduced the character to answer questions about the faith, Catholics on social media called the character a “scandalizing mockery of the sacred priesthood” that offered only “a substitute for real interaction.” On April 24, Catholic Answers apologized for the experiment, and Justin was reintroduced as a lay theologian. Catholics close to the Vatican’s work on artificial intelligence say that Justin captures the possible problems with AI evangelization and the reasons for caution in Pope Francis’ and other church officials’ attempts to tackle AI, even as the technology is becoming an increasingly buzzy topic at the Vatican. The Rev. Philip Larrey. (Photo courtesy Boston College) The Rev. Philip Larrey, a professor in the department of formative education at Boston College, said that while he thinks Catholic Answers are a good group, “they were a little bit too quick to enter into something …

New crop of Swiss Guards prepares to serve the pope through hard work and listening

New crop of Swiss Guards prepares to serve the pope through hard work and listening

Published by Sam

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — With a determined gaze, Renato Peter clenched the flag of the Swiss Guard in his fist while holding up three fingers of his other hand in a salute to the Holy Trinity. When called upon, the 24-year-old from a tiny Swiss town near Lake Constance yelled his oath to protect the pope and his legitimate successors with his life.  Peter is one of 34 young Catholic men who became members of the Swiss Guard Monday (May 6) at a ceremony held in St. Damaso courtyard at the Vatican. Though the young men, all actually Swiss, committed to the imposing task of defending the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.5 billion Catholics, becoming a Swiss Guard today is less about combat and more about empathy, charity and listening. A few days before, on a sunny afternoon outside the guards’ Vatican barracks, a number of the new recruits trained for Monday’s ceremony, clicking their heels to the sound of battle drums. Officers watched their every move as they turned and marched, ordering the …

Priests prepare to bring synodality from the Vatican to parishes around the world

Priests prepare to bring synodality from the Vatican to parishes around the world

Published by Sam

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — After five days of meetings and an audience with Pope Francis in the past week (April 28-May 2), more than 200 parish priests from around the world are preparing to return home and bring the pope’s mission of synodality to their local communities. The Rev. Clinton Ressler, a parish priest in Texas City, Texas, one of seven U.S. pastors at the International Meeting of Parish Priests this week, said the media often portray the synod not as an open dialogue the pope intended, but as an effort to change church doctrine. “When it’s presented that way, I think it’s often disturbing, scary, unsettling,” Ressler said during a meeting with Vatican journalists Thursday (May 2). “I think that’s an unfair representation of what the synod actually is. It’s a much more practical, I’d say grassroots level, way to teach people how to do communitarian discernment and take responsibility for their parish and community.” Ressler’s parish near Galveston has a tactical discernment team that works with the pastoral council to determine the goals …

Expanding clergy sexual abuse probe targets New Orleans Catholic church leaders

Expanding clergy sexual abuse probe targets New Orleans Catholic church leaders

Published by Sam

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Authorities have expanded an investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans to include senior church officials suspected of shielding predatory priests for decades and failing to report their crimes to law enforcement. Louisiana State Police carried out a sweeping search warrant last week at the Archdiocese of New Orleans, seeking a long-secreted cache of church records and communications between local church leaders and the Vatican about the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse. The search signaled a new phase of the investigation that will seek to determine what particular church leaders, including Archbishop Gregory Aymond and his predecessors, knew about claims that the warrant describes as “ignored and in many cases covered up.” “The Archdiocese of New Orleans has been openly discussing the topic of sex abuse for over 20 years,” Bill Kearney, an archdiocese spokesman, said in a statement. “In keeping with this, we also are committed to working with law enforcement in these endeavors.” The warrant contained several new details about the sex-trafficking …

The Catholic Church wants to have a say on the future of AI

The Catholic Church wants to have a say on the future of AI

Published by Sam

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — In office buildings in Silicon Valley, at closed-door meetings in Rome and in private audiences with Pope Francis at the Vatican, programmers pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence are mining the church’s insight on what makes human beings tick. The rapid development in the field of AI “is asking us to think again fundamentally about what it is that makes us human. What distinguishes humans from machines?” said Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican Council for Culture and among a handful of Catholic clergy who are bridging the divide between scientific knowledge and the church’s spiritual and theological tradition. In conversations with AI programmers and experts, Tighe said he talks about consciousness and “relationality” as key prerogatives of human beings that distinguish us from machines. But the creators of AI are not trying to re-create humans, he said in a recent interview with Religion News Service. “They are creating another type of entity.” As Silicon Valley fills with wannabe gods, they are turning to the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year-old study of …