Cardinal Pietro Parolin travels to Russia for a state visit on 21-24 August out of a desire to "build bridges and increase mutual understanding and dialogue" and to "multiply opportunities of encounter" with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Vatican's Apostolic Nuncio to the Russian Federation, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, made that assessment of the Secretary of State's [...]
On the second anniversary of the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was killed in 1980 by military squadrons linked to the Regime in San Salvador as he defended the poor, Pope Francis recalled Romero’s religious fervor and passion for justice while warning the faithful against a ‘lukewarm’ Church. The Pope was speaking during Mass at [...]
May 15, 2017, Monday "I saw that American leaders wanted to cooperate with Russia.”—The influential Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Oxford-educated "Foreign Minister" of the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church, in an interview published today on the website of the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate. The interview follows Hilarion's four-day trip to Washington D.C. to participate [...]
Pope Francis’s plane touched down at Monte Real Air Base shortly before 4:30pm local time in Portugal. The sky was threatening for much of the afternoon – not in the way it is always threatening a little rain in the height of springtime a thousand feet up and twenty-odd miles off the Atlantic coast – but [...]
March 27, 2017, Monday -- A Communist Ecumenist? Zyuganov on the Split between Eastern and Western Christianity I have been trying to drive home one fundamental point for more than 20 years now, both in the pages of Inside the Vatican magazine, and in the work of the Urbi et Orbi Foundation which seeks to "build [...]
15 Feb 2017 – By Jonathan Luxmoore OXFORD, England (CNS) — A prominent Catholic ecumenist has urged a better understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church. “Those suspicious of the Russian Orthodox stance should go and see what’s happening,” said Barbara Hallensleben, a consultor with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. “Of course, nationalist and [...]
Pope Francis takes off for the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Friday for a two-day visit to the majority Orthodox republic. As well as meeting with religious and civil authorities in Tbilisi, the Pope will travel to the nearby ancient city of Mtskheta, founded in the 5th century BC and famed as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage [...]
St. Gregory Palamas We are made up of a soul and body, and both soul and body consist of many members. For the soul too has members after a fashion: those parts of it concerned with growth, desiring, anger and reason. Therefore, true fasting must extend to every part, cleansing and healing them all. [...]
Icon of the Resurrection Why is the Great Pascha on a Different Date than Easter? This year the Orthodox Church celebrated the Great Pascha, their Easter, on May 1, several weeks after the rest of the Christian world celebrated Easter. This feast is preceded by a Holy Week similar to the Catholic one, and [...]
Inside the Vatican Brief Overview of Today’s American Catholic Print Publications By Inside the Vatican Staff Print magazines in the United States are generally in a steady decline that has lasted since the mid-1990s, with the arrival of the internet. As more Catholic publications choose to join the ever-growing number of online periodicals, the remaining print [...]
