Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday invited Pope Francis to visit the Holy Land, matching a standing invitation from Israel. The pontiff, who has made many appeals for peace in the Middle East since his election in March, has already accepted an invitation from Israeli president Shimon Peres, and is widely expected to make the…
Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII, who played key roles in fostering Catholic-Jewish relations, will be canonized as saints. The ceremony will take place next April 27, the Vatican announced Monday. Polish-born John Paul, who reigned from 1978 to 2005, made bettering Catholic-Jewish relations a cornerstone of his papacy. John XXIII, who reigned…
WASHINGTON — A GOP official in Virginia refused to apologize for an anti-Semitic joke, although the party’s candidate for governor called it inappropriate. “I did not tell an anti-Semitic joke,” John Whitbeck, the Republican Party’s chairman in its 10th Congressional District, in northern Virginia, told the Free Beacon on Wednesday. “I told a joke I…
Pope Francis praised Jews for keeping their faith despite the Holocaust and other “terrible trials” throughout history, and reaffirmed Judaism as the “holy root” of Christianity. Francis made the statements in an unprecedented open letter to Eugenio Scalfari, a prominent Italian atheist and founding editor of the liberal newspaper La Repubblica. The pope’s letter, published…
Pope Francis, in some of the most compassionate words from any pontiff on gays, said they should not be judged or marginalised and should be integrated into society, but he reaffirmed Church teaching that homosexual acts are a sin. In a broad-ranging 80-minute conversation with journalists on the plane bringing him back from a week-long…
Pope John Paul II, the globe-trotting pontiff who led the Catholic Church for nearly 27 years, and Pope John XXIII, who called the reforming Second Vatican Council, will be declared saints, the Vatican said on Friday. The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved a second miracle attributed to John Paul, a Pole who was elected…
It’s been diverting this past week to join in the Popewatch brouhaha — who doesn’t like secretive meetings, signals and intrigue, not to mention red Prada shoes? But now that it’s over, the white smoke has risen, the habeus papams have been uttered and Francis has been chosen, let’s talk about a less-discussed but no…
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian cardinal who was elected pope late Wednesday and will take the name Francis I, is said to have a good relationship with Argentinian Jews. Bergoglio, 76, a Jesuit, was the choice of the College of Cardinals following two days of voting in Vatican City. He is the first pope to…
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