Dixie Catholics credit the strong Southern sense of community, and dialogue with faithful Protestants, with helping to power the Church’s growth there.
LINDEN, Va. — In the waves of turbulence that rippled throughout the Catholic Church in the 1970s, the nuns of St. Dominic’s Monastery found themselves forced to leave their longtime home in Wisconsin in search of a new one.
The nuns moved to a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., while looking for a permanent setting conducive to the cloistered, contemplative life they sought to lead. It would be more than two decades before they found one. When they did, it was in what may seem a most unlikely place: the rural northeast of Virginia, considered one of the Protestant Bible Belt states of the South.
The story of St. Dominic’s Monastery’s southern move may be the story of U.S. Catholicism. New data shows that some of the fastest-growing dioceses in the country are deep in the U.S. South.
The third-fastest-developing diocese is Atlanta, which saw the number of registered parishioners explode from nearly 322,000 in 2002 to 1 million in 2012 — an increase of more than twofold, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Atlanta also has the largest Eucharistic Congress in the country, with an annual attendance of about 30,000, according to an archdiocesan official. Source
On Wednesday the Bishop Of Rome addressed 11,000 ticketed guests on the South Lawn of the White House, during which he pontificated on the dire importance of exhibiting religious tolerance. During his hour-long speech, a smiling Pope Francis was quoted telling the White House guests that the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible, and should therefore be respected as such.
Bangkok, Thailand, Apr 12, 2016 / 12:04 am (
LOS ANGELES — Lou Engle of The Call is again raising concerns after a Roman Catholic leader prostrated at his feet on Saturday in declaring that he wanted to “kiss his feet” in an act of reconciliation between Christians and Catholics, and Engle returned the act by likewise kissing the man’s shoe. 
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The wide-ranging papal document on the Catholic Church and modern-day families that the Vatican released on Friday (April 8) was expected to be the culmination of a two-year gantlet of unusually frank discussions — a chance for Pope Francis to finally settle the fierce debates, and even dark warnings of schism, that his effort to open dialogue on contentious topics had unleashed. 
Vatican City, Apr 8, 2016 / 12:25 pm (
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Over 26,000 people have signed a petition calling upon a Roman Catholic university in California to cancel a “hyper-sexualized drag show,” the fifth of its kind at the Catholic-based educational institution. 
Pope Francis and senior Methodist representatives from around the world will take part in a series of events to mark the opening of the new Methodist Ecumenical Office in Rome (MEOR). 
China, in one of the most ludicrous displays of totalitarianism in history, has restricted Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without permission from the government. Based on a statement that was given from the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the ruling, which will be applicable as of March 2015, stringently states the processes an individual must follow in order to reincarnate is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”