Religious and indigenous leaders from 21 countries gathered in Norway June 19 to launch a new initiative aimed at saving the world's tropical rainforests from the impact of deforestation and climate change.
The Vatican announced the pope will visit Chile Jan. 15-18 and Peru Jan. 18-21.
Eight months after the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life officially began functioning, Pope Francis named Schonstatt Fr. Alexandre Awi Mello of Brazil to serve as its secretary.
Peruvian Archbishop Salvador Pineiro Garcia-Calderon of Ayacucho said May 16 that Pope Francis is considering dedicating a meeting of the Synod of Bishops to the concerns of the indigenous people of the Amazon region.
Pope Francis warned bishops from across the Western Hemisphere that corruption poses a grave threat to the people of Latin America. He also reiterated calls for the church to work closely with people to renew their hope.
Francis met with the 13 prelates from Cuba earlier that day during the "ad limina" visit that bishops are required to make to the Vatican.
The Brazilian bishops' Indigenous Missionary Council criticized an April 30 attack in a remote area of Maranhao state that left 13 Gamela Indians injured.
Pope Francis and cardinals present in Rome will formally approve the canonizations of two of the children who saw Mary in Fatima, a large group of Brazilian martyrs, three child martyrs from Mexico and two priests.
Keith Helmuth has had reason to cry over the ecological landscape of Earth, his common home, these last 70-plus years. From the window of a jetliner on a clear, moonlit night, Helmuth spied the vast expanse of the Amazon watershed, where down below the scale of the destruction of clear-cut rain forest was “stunning,” he recalled.
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The number of Catholics worldwide is rising fastest in Africa while the church continues to suffer from a shortage of priests in some parts of the world. According to the Vatican’s latest statistics, the number of Catholics globally rose 1 percent, to 1.3 billion, in 2015.
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