News & Commentary

Benedictine Abbot Donato Ogliari, abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, center, offered a spiritual meditation April 29, 2025, in the Vatican synod hall to cardinals attending the general congregation before the conclave begins. The abbot is seated between Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, and Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Build communion with diversity, abbot tells cardinals before conclave

The cardinals preparing to elect a new pope must strengthen communion in the Catholic Church, promoting a form of unity that has nothing to do with uniformity and everything to do with a common focus on Jesus, a Benedictine abbot told the ...
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Archbishop Cordileone responds to Pelosi remarks on Cardinal Ladaria letter

San Francisco's archbishop said May 17 that the "positive reaction" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has expressed about a Vatican official's letter to the U.S. bishops about Catholic politicians who support abortion receiving Communion "raises hope that progress can be made ...
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Pope appeals for peace in Holy Land, says death of children ‘unacceptable’

The injury and death of so many innocent people, especially children, caused by escalating violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip is “terrible and unacceptable,” putting the area at risk of sinking into “a spiral of death and destruction,” Pope ...
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High court to hear major abortion case from Mississippi in its next term

The U.S. Supreme Court said in a May 17 order that it will hear oral arguments during its next term on a 2018 Mississippi abortion law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
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U.S. climate envoy meets pope, speaks at Vatican conference

John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden's special envoy for climate, met privately with Pope Francis May 15, the day after giving a keynote address at a closed-door meeting of the Pontifical Academy for Sciences and the Pontifical Academy for Social ...
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US bishop urges end of violence between Israelis, Palestinians

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace called on Israelis and Palestinians to end the violence in Jerusalem and Gaza that has claimed dozens of lives and left hundreds of people injured.
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Advocate: S. Carolina approval of firing squad, electric chair ‘chilling’

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The passage of a bill by South Carolina lawmakers in early May to restart executions after 10 years and to add death by firing squad or electric chair as options if lethal injection drugs are not available ...
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