Hungarian President Katalin Novák has pardoned several convicted far-right terrorists on the occasion of Pope Francis’ trip to Budapest. “The week of the Pope’s visit offers a special opportunity for the head of state to make use of her right of amnesty,” the presidential chancellery announced in Budapest on Thursday evening. The amnesty affected the […]
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Pope Francis landed in Kazakhstan on Tuesday to attend an international religious gathering, as part of his three-day visit to the central Asian country. In the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan, which was called Astana until 2019, the so-called Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions is taking place for the seventh time. Francis is the […]
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Pope Francis has called on Iraq’s Christians to forgive the injustices committed against them by Islamic extremists. The call came as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the so-called Islamic State group’s horrific reign. At each stop in northern Iraq […]
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Pope Francis apologised to the faithful for not being able to greet them and shake their hands as Italy posted a record spike in coronavirus infections that is threatening to once again spiral out of control. Instead of wading into the crowd to embrace the sick and kiss babies during his weekly general audience on […]
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Pope Francis starts a trip on Sunday to Bulgaria and North Macedonia where he will have to tread carefully because of sensitive relations with the dominant Eastern Orthodox Church in the two Balkan countries where Catholics are a tiny minority. Bulgaria, a country of 7.1 million people, is home to just 58,000 Catholics, while North […]
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Pope Francis told the tiny Catholic community in predominantly Muslim Morocco on Sunday that their mission was not to covert their neighbours but to live in brotherhood with other faiths. Francis has used his two-day trip to stress inter-faith dialogue. He has also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s efforts to spread a form of Islam […]
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Pope Francis on Sunday (October 7) asked faithful to pray to St. Michael the Archangel, “to repel the attacks of the devil who wants to divide the Church” during his weekly Angelus at the Vatican. The leader of the 1.2 billion Catholics ordered a “thorough study” of all documents in Holy See offices concerning disgraced former […]
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Pope Francis appealed to Sicily’s Mafia on Saturday to abandon a life of crime and violence, saying the island needed “men and women of love, not men and women ‘of honour,'” using the term mobsters apply to themselves. Francis, in the Sicilian capital, said organised crime members – many of whom go to church and […]
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The Vatican expressed “shame and sorrow” on Thursday over revelations that Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania sexually abused about 1,000 people over seven decades, vowing to hold abusers and those who protected them accountable. In a long statement that broke the Vatican’s silence over a damning U.S. grand jury report that has shaken the American […]
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Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania sexually abused thousands of children over a 70-year period and silenced victims through “the weaponization of faith” and a systematic cover-up campaign by their bishops, the state attorney general said on Tuesday. An 884-page report made public by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro after a two-year investigation contained graphic examples […]
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