VATICAN CITY – When the Pope calls you to Rome, you go.
Dozens of mayors from around the world heeded the call in 2015, when Pope Francis invited them to the Vatican to discuss actions their cities could take against climate change and human trafficking. And it happened again last month, when Francis asked 70 mayors, mostly from Europe, to come and discuss local responses to the refugee crisis.
Both meetings amounted to follow-up on the Pope’s June 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato Sì. The 184-page letter expressed Francis’ concerns for the “common home” of humanity. In addition to strong words on the need to fight climate change, he included statements on the need for more socially inclusive urban planning. Continue reading
“Pope Francis told participants at a Vatican gathering on religious life that the exodus of clergy and religious men and women is weakening the Church and must be addressed. “We are dealing with a ‘hemorrhage’ that is debilitating to consecrated life and the very life of the Church,” the Pope said, noting that the number of desertions from the consecrated life is “worrisome.” –
“A leading Egyptian cleric irked his Christian compatriots when he said on television that the Islamic figure Muhammed would marry the Virgin Mary in heaven. …The Quran said: ‘Allah will give [the Prophet] women preferable to his wives, Muslim, pious, pure women.’” One, he said, referred to Asiya and the other to Mary. Egypt’s Christian community was enraged by Galil’s remarks. The community’s youth movement issued a statement demanding an apology. The movement’s chairman, Nader Soubhi, said: “We Christians don’t recognize any aspect of the Virgin Mary except her sanctity, her purity and her virginity. The Virgin Mary will never lose any of these.” –
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MANILA — The Catholic Church is “full of sh**t,” according to President Duterte who ramped up his attacks against priests and bishops in the Philippines, 
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“Numerous unconfirmed reports are circulating in the international media that President Donald Trump intends announcing Monday that he will relocate the U.S. embassy to Israel from the coastal city of Tel Aviv to the capital city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital city since its founding in 1948, but most countries have deferred moving the embassy there because the original UN partition plan for the British Mandate 
(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.
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.