Category: Catholic Church

The Vatican has proposed giving hundreds of women who live like nuns within the troubled Legion of Christ order greater autonomy after a Holy See investigation found serious problems in their regimented communities.

In 2010, former consecrated women spoke of the cult-like conditions they lived in.

Jeff Anderson, the US attorney who has spearheaded more than 1,500 lawsuits against the Catholic Church, has now established a law firm in the UK.

At least 454 people were injured in the Philippines on Sunday as more than 1 million barefoot devotees joined an annual procession to honour a centuries-old statue of a suffering Jesus Christ, known as the Black Nazarene.

The child abuse scandals rocking Belgium’s powerful Catholic Church are also shaking the faith of followers, with more and more people asking to be struck off baptism registers — a global movement known as “de-baptism“.

Facing a drop in attendance and a shortage of priests, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn plans to close two churches, fold six parishes into three and impose strict budget constraints on all 198 of its parishes.

The move, announced from pulpits on Sunday, was described by church officials as the first phase of a broad consolidation that will result in further closings or mergers over the next two years, eventually affecting every parish in the diocese, which serves an estimated 1.5 million Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens.

For decades tourists have visited the twisting spires of Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia church, but 128 years after construction began Catholic faithful worshipped there for the first time on Sunday.

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass to give his official blessing to the church designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, whose sculptural masterpieces dot the city in the region of Catalonia.

While work is not scheduled to finish for many more years on the intricate and colourful Sagrada Familia, enough had been done to welcome the pontiff, including installing last minute stained-glass windows.

A Catholic church in the central Swiss city of Lucerne has sparked controversy among believers with an AIDS awareness campaign that involves distributing to teenagers condoms bearing the slogan “protect thy neighbor as thyself.”