March 2021

Ireland’s Catholic bishops announced yesterday that they would hold a national synodal assembly “within the next five years.”

As the dust settles on Pope Francis’ remarkable four-day visit to Iraq – surely one of the most iconic of his pontificate, the attention swings to the analysis. How might this Apostolic Journey, the first of any Pope to the land of Abraham, shape the future?

The Vatican will mark the fifth anniversary of the publication of Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis’ 2016 exhortation on the family, with a live-streamed event on 19 March.

Pope Francis holds a general audience at the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican, Oct 28, 2020. / Credit: Vatican Media Pope Francis said …

Cardinal Robert Sarah today rejected claims that he and Pope Francis are enemies, in his first interview since stepping down from his Vatican post.

Pope Francis today urged Catholics worldwide to keep praying for “our sorely tried brothers and sisters” in Iraq.

Speaking at his general audience this morning the pope reflected on his historic three-day visit to the Middle Eastern country.

A Catholic priest will proceed with a challenge to the Scottish government’s ban on public worship on Thursday despite an announcement that restrictions will be lifted earlier than previously expected.

Every person has a role to play to fight human trafficking, Catholic advocates said at an online conference yesterday.

St. James the Apostle church in Nurio, in the Mexican state of Michoacán, was destroyed by a fire on Sunday.

Pope Francis yesterday confirmed that he planned to visit Hungary for the closing Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress, which will take place 12 Septemberin Budapest’s Heroes’ Square.

A statue of the Virgin Mary that had been desecrated by the Islamic State was present at Pope Francis’ Mass in Erbil on Sunday.

Full transcript of Pope Francis’ in-flight press conference from Baghdad, Iraq, to Rome, Italy on 8 March 2021.

On his flight to Rome from Baghdad today, Pope Francis said that Iraq’s top Shiite cleric is a “humble and wise man,” and their 6 March meeting had a “universal message” about the importance of fraternity.

Pope Francis returns a historic prayer manuscript to Immaculate Conception Church in Bakhdida, Iraq, March 7, 2021. Credit: Vatican Media. During his trip to Iraq, …

Pope Francis met yesterday with a father who lost his wife and two children in a shipwreck as Syrian war refugees.

Abdullah Kurdi was one of the thousands of people in the crowd at the pope’s stadium Mass in Erbil, Iraq yesterday.

A tattoo artist has restored the Stations of the Cross at a church in Belarus at the invitation of the local pastor. 

Julia Kulba — known in the tattoo business as Pipetka — applied her skills to the 14 bas-relief Stations of Cross at the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Adamovichi, a village in the northwestern Grodno Region.

Pope Francis, celebrating an open-air Mass at the Franso Hariri football stadium in Erbil, heralded the Church in Iraq for proclaiming the wisdom of the Cross by “spreading Christ’s mercy and forgiveness.”

Standing in the newly-reconstructed Church of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Christian Church in Iraq, Pope Francis praised the people of Qaraqosh who suffered so much under the tyranny of the so-called Islamic State.

On Sunday morning, the last full day of his historic visit to Iraq, Pope Francis arrived at the Hosh al-Bieaa centre in Mosul where he prayed, amidst the ruins and along with the people of Iraq, for all the victims of war in the country and throughout the entirety of the Middle East.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has announced that 6 March will become a ‘National Day of Tolerance and Coexistence’ in Iraq. The announcement came after the historic encounter in Najaf between Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani and Pope Francis and the interreligious meeting in the ancient city of Ur later that day.