(Vatican Radio) As we mark the annual week of prayer for Christian Unity, Catholics have much to celebrate because 2016 was “truly an ecumenical year”. That’s the view of Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who accompanied Pope Francis on all his ecumenical journeys throughout the past year.
The cardinal was reflecting on the theme for this week of prayer which is centred on a verse from St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: ‘Reconciliation: the love of Christ compels us’. Members of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany were asked to prepare material on this theme which is set in the context of this year’s 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Continue reading
Pope Francis will bless the Philippines and its leader Rodrigo Duterte, an aide to the president said, in a gesture of goodwill to a controversial figure known for his lurid lambasting of priests and bishops.
This weekend Pope Francis received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Vatican and formally inaugurated the new Embassy of the State of Palestine to the Holy See.
“The Vatican has invited the undisputed father of the modern, pro-abortion population control movement to present a paper at an upcoming Vatican-run conference. Dr. Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller 
“The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, operating through its Migration and Refugee Services division, resettled more than 22,000 refugees in 2015, with many of them coming from the Muslim-dominated countries of Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan. …Some of the states where the Catholic bishops are most active in resettling Muslim refugees are Michigan, Minnesota, Tennessee, Ohio, Florida, California, Arizona, Maine, Georgia, Nebraska, Illinois, Virginia, Kentucky, Washington, Texas and Utah. …At the same time the Catholic Bishops are placing Muslim refugees into hundreds of U.S. cities and towns, they have also been lobbying Congress for the U.S. to embrace the mostly Catholic Central Americans who have massed at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum. “If you are a Catholic, you are likely being bombarded this week (Jan. 8-14) with propaganda about welcoming the stranger,” writes refugee watchdog Ann Corcoran at her blog, Refugee Resettlement Watch.” –
An ancient chivalric order led by a British former Guards officer has dismissed as “irrelevant” an investigation launched by Pope Francis into the dismissal of a senior knight, in an increasingly bitter row with the Vatican.
Fra’ Matthew Festing said the Order would follow the Pope at this ‘complex and difficult time’
“It’s going to be an important year in the church because it’s the 100th anniversary of Mary’s apparitions at Fatima and we’re going to be celebrating that particular event in the diocese along with the universal church,” said Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence.
“The New York Police Department is allowing Sikh officers to wear full turbans in place of the traditional police cap and grow beards up to a half-inch long as required by their religion. …It’s a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully. And now I have the opportunity to make the change, and I thought it was about time that we did that. O’Neill said the NYPD has about 160 Sikh officers. …Sikh advocates praised the NYPD’s decision to be more inclusive. If the NYPD’s new policy indeed allows for Sikhs to maintain unshorn beards and turbans, that sends a powerful message to the rest of America that Sikhs are an important part of our nation’s fabric,” Harsimran Kaur, legal director of The Sikh Coalition, told