Joshua J. McElwee

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The three-page memorandum, signed by about 150 women in India, praises Gracias' words in the interview, but asks for "changes in the policies, practices and structures of the Church so that women can participate fully in" leadership.

Due to Italy's coronavirus scare, a bevy of scheduled conferences are being postponed or just canceled, and many tourists are changing plans at the last minute.

After an unsubstantiated report in an Italian newspaper sparked global headlines March 3 that Pope Francis had been tested for exposure to the coronavirus, the Vatican reaffirmed in a statement that the pontiff was only suffering from a normal cold.

The Vatican has created a new "task force" of experts in clergy sexual abuse to assist the world's local bishops' conferences in reviewing their child protection guidelines.

In an NCR interview, Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of the pope's Council of Cardinals, called himself a "convert" to the cause of women seeking more opportunities for responsibility in the church.

Bishop John Michael Botean, who leads the Eparchy of St. George's in Canton, Ohio, the Romanian Greek Catholic Church's only diocese abroad, spoke with unusual candor in a Feb. 18 interview.

European commentators known as strong supporters of Pope Francis have responded to Querida Amazonia with a range of confusion, disappointment, and outright anger.

Pope Francis has not granted a request from the Catholic bishops of the Amazon to allow for the priestly ordination of married men in their territories in order to address a severe lack of ministers across the nine-nation region.

Pope Francis will visit Malta at the end of May, making his first trip abroad in 2020 to a small island nation at the forefront of a continued surge of migrants and refugees across the Mediterranean.

Pope Francis' highly anticipated document responding to last year's Synod of Catholic bishops from the Amazon region, expected to address of host of sensitive topics, will be released Feb. 12, the Vatican has announced.

Pope Francis helped facilitate efforts to restructure the crippling debt load in his native Argentina Feb. 5, taking part in a Vatican conference that was the setting for discussions between the country's finance minister and the head of the International Monetary Fund.

The Vatican press office confirmed Feb. 5 that there has been an adjustment to Archbishop Georg Gänswein's role as head of the pontifical household.

The daylong conference organized by the National Conservatism project mixed clarion calls against "hegemonic progressivism" with occasional warnings about Pope Francis' vision for the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis has completed work on his highly anticipated response to last year's Vatican gathering of Catholic bishops from the Amazon that may allow for the ordination of married men as Catholic priests in the nine-nation region.

Pope Francis appointed an Italian woman as an undersecretary in the Vatican's Secretariat of State Jan. 15, in the first such appointment of a woman to a managerial role in what is traditionally considered the city-state's most important office.

Retired Pope Benedict XVI's name is being removed as a coauthor of a controversial new book defending the Catholic Church's practice of clerical celibacy after dueling accounts emerged of the ex-pontiff's involvement in the preparation of the volume.

Noted Catholic ethicists and moral theologians share with NCR their thoughts on the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani and the subsequent escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Retired Pope Benedict XVI has coauthored a new book defending the Catholic Church's practice of a celibate priesthood, in a shocking move that comes as Pope Francis is considering the possibility of allowing older, married men to be ordained as priests in the Amazon region.

Pope Francis Jan. 9 strongly criticized the response of the world's governments to the catastrophic effects of climate change, calling their efforts in an annual address to the Vatican's diplomatic corps "very weak" and "a source of grave concern."