World Meeting of Families 2018

Grace on the Margins: During the World Meeting of Families last week, signs that Ireland has indeed moved on from the church of their childhood years could be seen clearly in Dublin's streets, and heard in the voices of the taxi drivers who navigate them.

The Irish bishops' conference announced Aug. 24 that the divestment process will remove from its financial holdings the top 200 oil and gas companies within a five-year period.

Speaking aboard the Aug. 26 flight back to Rome from Ireland, Francis said the former Vatican ambassador's 11-page document of unsubstantiated claims "speaks for itself."

Before celebrating Mass in a Dublin park, Pope Francis solemnly asked forgiveness for the thousands of cases of sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by Catholics in Ireland.

Pope Francis met eight survivors of clergy and institutional abuse on the first of his two-day visit to Ireland, in a 90-minute encounter several in the meeting called "cordial and polite."

Dublin -- Pope Francis began his two-day trip to Ireland by acknowledging that Catholic leaders in the country failed over decades to protect children from sexual abuse by priests and clergy, saying bishops and superiors had caused what he termed "grave scandal."

Grace on the Margins: If World Meeting of Families organizers had any hope of playing down LGBTQ issues in the church, LGBTQ Catholic activists and their allies dashed those aspirations this week in Dublin.

U.S. Jesuit Fr. James Martin set out a series of ways in which parishes can show welcome and respect to LGBT Catholics.

World Meeting of Families: Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican's Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life, said the church needs God to help it build bridges, to communicate and to help it understand that "we need to speak to each other and accept each other as children of God."

Catholics gathered at "Voices Pope Francis Will Not Hear" to discuss topics and people excluded from the international gathering, including marginalization of women and LGBT persons, and the abuse scandal.

Despite Irish Catholics' many misgivings about the sexual abuse scandals in the church and the treatment of women and LGBT people, there is much enthusiasm for the ninth World Meeting of Families, scheduled to take place Aug. 21-26 in Dublin.

Grace on the Margins: The young women and children who suffered at Ireland's Catholic institutions also deserve an act of contrition by the pope, hierarchy, clergy and women religious.

An Irish group campaigning for reform in the Catholic Church has launched a petition ahead of Pope Francis' papal visit in August to Ireland calling on the Vatican to change its "theological language that is gravely insulting to LGBTQI people."

Receiving a delegation from Ireland and blessing an icon of the Holy Family, Pope Francis confirmed his intention to visit Dublin for the final days of the World Meeting of Families.

DignityUSA responded to the World Meeting of Families office's reissue of the "Amoris" resource booklet without an image of a same-sex couple which was reproduced in the first edition on page 24. 

The president of the 2018 World Meeting of Families stressed that the church is seeking to promote the ideal of the family through the international gathering of families in Ireland.