The General Assembly of the Synod, comprising 368 religious and lay people — including women — from around 100 countries, will hold closed-door debates on potential reforms at the Vatican until October 27.

The synod had already gathered for a month-long assembly in October 2023, after a three-year worldwide consultation among Catholics organised by Francis to confront challenges facing the 2,000-year-old Church.

The 87-year-old Argentine pontiff will have the final say on any doctrinal changes they recommend.

Last year, the assembly addressed themes as varied as attitudes to LGBTQ people, polygamy, the ordination of married men and the fight against the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Although the body resisted pressure to allow the ordination of female priests, calls continue for more visibility and space for women in an institution still run by men.

No decisions are expected any time soon, with the most sensitive issues entrusted to working groups that will deliver their conclusions in June 2025.

Francis launched the Assembly with a mass in St Peter’s Square, where he urged participants to enter the discussions with an open mind.

“Let us be careful not to see our contributions as points to defend at all costs or agendas to be imposed,” he said.

He added that the meeting was “not a parliamentary assembly, but rather a place of listening in communion”.

On Tuesday evening, Francis held a “penitential” vigil attended by around 2,5000 people in St Peter’s Basilica, during which he again asked forgiveness and expressed his “shame” for the abuse by priests that has overshadowed the Church’s work across the world.

People at the vigil heard from a South African former choirboy who was assaulted by a priest when he was just 11, and who denounced a lack of transparency and responsibility in and by the Church that he said had shaken the faith of millions of people.

“We are here as beggars of the Father’s mercy, asking for forgiveness,” Francis said.

“How could we be credible in our mission if we do not acknowledge our mistakes and stoop to heal the wounds we have caused by our sins?” he added.

Source: AFP

Catholic leaders across West and Central Africa are calling for assistance following unprecedented and deadly floods that have swept through the regions.

The catastrophic flooding in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad, Mali, Ghana, and Liberia has triggered severe humanitarian crises, affecting an estimated four million people, most of whom are children.

As of 17 September, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said that at least 341 people had died due to the floods that have also affected nearly 1.5 million people.

Bishop Dominique Tinoudji of the Diocese of Pala in Chad has urged the population not to despair, reminding them that “God is still on the throne.”

In a September 8 Mass dedicated to the flood victims, the bishop noted that “the situation we face might lead us to question God’s presence, His protection, and His help; but even in the face of such a severe trial, we must not give up hope.”

The bishop called Christians to action, urging them to make sure the new shelters now called home by the millions displaced by the floods do not constitute a source of fresh problems for the people.

“We must safeguard hygiene to prevent disease and protect the vulnerable from the cold and malaria-carrying mosquitoes,” Tinoudji said.

“We are one body in Christ, and individually member’s one of another. Opening your hand to give a kilogram of rice, some maize, or a bar of soap can make a huge difference,” he continued.

He emphasized the importance of supporting local Caritas organizations to ensure a coordinated disaster response.

“Caritas is our way of putting charity into action. Unfortunately, in many parishes, Caritas is either inactive or absent. Even our diocesan Caritas is still in its early stages,” the bishop said.

The Catholic Church leader encouraged communities to take “practical steps in city planning to reduce future risks, particularly in flood-prone areas.”

“Our engineers must help us design cities that consider natural water pathways, flood-prone areas, and proper drainage systems,” the bishop said and reiterated his call to trust in God’s continued presence, saying, “Do not be afraid; be strong and keep your trust in the Lord.”

In Nigeria, at least 269 people are reported dead and more than 640,000 people displaced, according to the latest data from the country’s disaster management agency NEMA.

The flooding in Nigeria was caused by the collapse of a dam following heavy rainfall. There are also concerns that there will be even more flooding in the days ahead as Cameroon plans to release water from the Lagdo Dam in the country’s Far North Region.

Nigeria’s hydrological services agency has warned that 11 states would potentially be flooded as a result.

The Catholic auxiliary bishop of Maiduguri – located in Nigeria’s Borno state that has been most affected by the floods – has in a video message noted that “the city of Maiduguri has been engulfed with a devastating flood and over 40 percent of the city is under water.”

In comments to Crux, the Episcopal Secretary for Laity Affairs of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Josef Iorakpen Ishu, noted that “the flood regime in Nigeria is heartbroken.”

“The flood that is ravishing some parts of the country is compounding the hardship on the people. In fact, the metrology agency is predicting that more states will experience flooding in days and weeks to come, and the government is asking those living in such areas to vacate immediately,” he told Crux.

“The question is should people vacate where? Because the same government has not provided alternative homes or makeshift homes for the people,” he said.

“Even humanitarian agencies are overwhelmed by the situation. It is a huge challenge for us here,” Ishu added.

Then referencing the recent End Bad Governance Protest in Nigeria, Ishu said the government’s response to the floods is just further proof that it has “lost its relevance at all levels: Federal, state and local levels.”

“People are helpless and looking up to God for divine intervention,” he said.

“We are reaching out to our friends at Aid to the Church in Need for your prayers, especially at this difficult and challenging time,” the Bishop of Maiduguri said in a video message.

In Cameroon, where the UN says at least 17 people have died, the government has offered assistance in terms of basic items like blankets, soap, and buckets.

In Niger, over 137,000 people have lost their homes due to flooding since August. Almost 100 deaths have been recorded.

“The situation [in West and Central Africa] is devastating — people in the region are already grappling with rising hunger and alarmingly high malnutrition,” said Modou Diaw, the West Africa Vice President for the International Red Cross.

Climate change is now blamed for the floods, triggering calls for a response to the high cost Africa pays due to the issue.

“Africa is losing an estimated 2-5 percent of its GDP annually due to climate-related disasters,” said Dr. Richard Munang, Africa Regional Climate Change Coordinator at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in comments to Crux.

“For instance, adaptation costs in sub-Saharan Africa are projected to reach $30-50 billion annually over the next decade,” he said.

Source: Crux

A new analysis of the Vatican’s financial situation by an Italian news outlet contains both good and bad news for papal finances, pointing to relative success in efforts to contain ballooning deficits but also seemingly irreversible long-term declines.

According to an overview of the most recent financial data published July 26 by La Repubblica, Italy’s most widely read daily newspaper, the Vatican’s annual operating deficit grew by roughly $5.4 million in 2023, a lower figure than in past years. The report suggested the result was due to the impact of both spending cuts and also efforts to generate more realistic appraisals of the value of Vatican properties.

Among the cost-cutting measures adopted in recent years include new limits on hiring and contracting, as well as efforts to increase the rents collected on some Vatican properties which are leased commercially and to put others up for sale.

The report cited a recently completed financial statement approved by the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, led by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx. According to the report, the deficit for 2023 amounted to over $90 million, with income of $1.25 billion and expenses of $1.34 billion.

Income in 2023 actually grew by $30 million, according to the financial statement, but expenses also went up by $36 million due to the impact of inflation.

The statement also indicated that the size of the 2023 deficit could still shrink somewhat depending on what the actual performance of the Vatican’s investment portfolios match projections.

The Repubblica analysis also found that income from the annual Peter’s Pence collection, which supports the works of the pope, amounted to $52.5 million in 2023, an increase over the $47.2 million collected in 2022.

Nonetheless, the net gain from the collection was offset by the fact that the fund’s reserves were once again draw upon in 2023 to support the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s chief administrative bureaucracy, to the tune of almost $98 million.

Moreover, the long-term trend in income from the fund is clearly downwards. According to the Repubblica analysis, collections dropped 23 percent overall from 2015 to 2019, and are poised for further reductions.

To some extent, those declines may be related to financial scandals, such as the aborted $400 million purchase of a former Harrods warehouse in London that resulted in the criminal convictions of nine figures for fraud, including Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu. Given that Peter’s Pence also is sometimes viewed as a referendum on the popularity of the current pope, various controversies surrounding Franci may also have had an impact.

More basically, however, most observers believe the core factor is that much of the Peter’s Pence income derives from wealthier nations, where Catholic populations, and therefore Catholic giving, have been in decline for decades.

Declines in income are especially worrying for Vatican accountants today, given concerns about an aging workforce and unfunded pension obligations down the line. There’s also alarm that rising costs and declining income could eventually compel the Vatican to either trim its payroll or cut salaries, or both, at time when both the volume and the complexity of the workload from around the world is increasing rapidly.

The financial statement reportedly approved by the Council for the Economy concerns the Holy See, and mostly excludes both the Government of the Vatican City State, which is responsible for administration of the physical territory – including income, for example, from the Vatican Museums – and also excludes the Institute for the Works of Religion, the so-called “Vatican bank,” which for 2023 showed $33.2 million in income and a total of $5.9 billion in client assets.

However, it’s considered improbable that income from either the city state or the IOR will be sufficient in coming years to offset the Vatican’s broad deficits, leaving it unclear for the moment how the losses will be sustained.

Source: Crux

The Vatican has excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, one of Pope Francis’s most virulent critics, after judging him guilty of splitting the Church, the dicastery in charge of doctrine said Friday.

The 83-year-old ultra conservative, who has called in the past for Francis to resign as pope, has been on trial since last month after being accused by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of the crime of schism, or splitting the Catholic Church.

“His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognise and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known,” wrote the dicastery in a statement.

“At the conclusion of the penal process, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Vigano was found guilty of the reserved delict of schism,” it wrote, adding that his punishment was “excommunication” in accordance with canon law.

An excommunicated Catholic is prohibited from administering and receiving the sacraments and from exercising ecclesiastical functions, according to canon law.

Vigano — who served as the Vatican’s papal envoy to the United States from 2011 to 2016 and who is backed by an ultra-conservative US church faction — has been an outspoken critic of Francis, going so far as accusing him of heresy.

In announcing last month that he had been summoned to appear before the powerful dicastery, which is charged with defending Catholic doctrine, the retired archbishop wrote on X: “I regard the accusations against me as an honour.”

He did not appear before the tribunal, which judged him in absentia.

– ‘Judged as a heretic’-

In a pages-long declaration, Vigano railed against Francis’s welcome for undocumented migrants, his “delirious encyclicals” about climate change and authorisation of blessings for same-sex couples, and accused him of promoting his allies.

“I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years,” he wrote last month, using the Argentine pope’s given name.

Vigano is allied with staunch traditionalists within the Church, especially in the United States, who have battled Francis’s more progressive moves on liturgical or social issues, such as the Latin Mass or welcoming LGBTQ people into the Church.

Accusing him of sowing confusion and failing to uphold key Catholic beliefs, they have sometimes called into question the legitimacy of Francis as leader of the world’s 1.3 million Catholics — raising fears of a rupture within the Church.

In 2018, Vigano made headlines by calling for Francis’s resignation, publishing a scathing list of accusations over the pope’s management of sexual abuse cases within the Church.

In particular, Vigano accused Francis of having long protected former American cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked a year later for sexual abuse against a minor.

Vigano again caused a major scandal in 2019 by publishing a long letter of unconditional support for then-US President Donald Trump, criticizing confinement measures during the Covid pandemic and defending a crackdown on rioters in the United States.

In November, in a rare move, Francis dismissed US bishop Joseph Strickland, a prominent conservative who had repeatedly criticised his papacy from his Tyler, Texas diocese.

Source: AFP

An African cardinal widely seen as a conservative critic of Pope Francis, and styled by some as possible candidate for the papacy himself, has warned of what he described as a “practical atheism” taking hold within the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea also repeated his criticism of Fiducia Supplicans, the recent Vatican document authorizing blessings of couples involved in same-sex unions, insisting that it’s not just traditional African culture but Catholic teaching itself which makes the document unacceptable.

Speaking to the episcopal conference of Cameroon, Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the Vatican’s former top official for liturgy, criticized Western bishops for their reluctance to oppose secular worldly values, accusing them of a failure of nerve.

“Many Western prelates are tetanized by the idea of opposing the world. They dream of being loved by the world; they’ve lost the desire to be a sign of contradiction,” said the 78-year-old Sarah.

Sarah told the Cameroonian bishops he believes “the Church of our time is experiencing the temptation of atheism. Not intellectual atheism, but that subtle and dangerous state of mind [of] fluid and practical atheism.”

“The latter is a dangerous disease, even if its initial symptoms seem benign,” he said.

According to Sarah, practical atheism is more insidious than its intellectual counterpart, as it does not declare itself openly but seeps into every aspect of contemporary culture, including ecclesiastical discourse.

He asserted that the Church and its leadership has been guilty of “accommodating, of complicity with this major lie that is fluid and practical atheism.”

“We pretend to be Christian believers and men of faith. We celebrate religious rites, but in fact we live as pagans and unbelievers,” Sarah said.

Sarah described “fluid and practical atheism” as a treacherous and elusive force. He compared it to being caught in a spider’s web, where efforts to escape only tighten its grip. This brand of atheism, he argues, is a masterful trap set by Satan himself.

The Church leader emphasized that this form of atheism preys on human frailties and on man’s tendencies to give in to its deceptions. He urged that within the Church, there should be no factions or self-proclaimed saviors, as such divisions play into the adversary’s hands.

“We don’t have to create parties in the Church; we don’t have to proclaim ourselves the saviors of this or that institution,” he said.

“But each of us can decide today: the lie of atheism will no longer pass through me; I no longer wish to renounce the light of faith; I no longer wish, out of convenience, laziness or conformism, to allow light and darkness to cohabit within me,” Sarah said.

“To maintain the spirit of faith,” he said, “is to reject anything that undermines it and to view the world solely through the lens of faith, holding steadfastly to God’s hand,” calling that the only path to true peace and kindness.

Sarah condemned the “bitterness and partisanship” that have plagued the Church, suggesting that these issues are symptomatic of a deeper spiritual crisis. He stressed that only a spirit of faith can foster genuine brotherly love and bring peace to a world ravaged by deceit and conflict.

The cleric also exhorted the episcopate in Africa to defend what he called the “unity of faith” in the face of Western distortions.

Referring to the October 2024 session of the ongoing Synod of Bishops on Synodality, Sarah praised the spirited defense African Church leaders have mounted of traditional doctrine and values.

“At the last Synod, the Church in Africa forcefully defended the dignity of the man and woman created by God. Her voice was ignored and scorned by those whose sole obsession is to please Western lobbies,” Sarah said.

“The Church in Africa will soon have to defend the truth of the priesthood and the unity of the faith. The Church in Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small,” he said.

The cleric noted that while the African Church today plays a critical role in upholding the word of God, Western Christians seem to be misled by their wealth into a false sense of enlightenment and modernity.

Sarah highlighted the unique position of African bishops as guardians of the faith’s universality, standing against those, he said, who fragment the truth and promote a culture of relativism. He praised their role as messengers of divine truth, suggesting that God often chooses the seemingly weak and unpopular to confound the strong and well-regarded.

Sarah also commended the bishops of Cameroon for their opposition to Fiducia Supplicans, the recent Vatican document permitting blessings for same-sex couples and others in non-traditional relationships. Sarah called the Cameroonians’ decision not to implement it as a “bold and prophetic move” that upholds the unity of the Church and the truth of its teachings.

He criticized the notion that African bishops’ resistance to Fiducia Supplicans is rooted in traditional African culture, dismissing such claims as a form of intellectual neo-colonialism.

Instead, Sarah pointed to the Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM)’s statement, which outlined theological and doctrinal reasons for not adopting such blessings in Africa, including previous declarations on homosexuality, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sacred Scriptures, and concerns about the language used in the Vatican document.

The President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya, told Crux that Sarah “is a great man of God, an icon of the Catholic Church in Africa and it’s a great opportunity that he is amongst us.”

“He has taught us to go into intimacy with God in silence, because there is so much noise in this world,” Nkea said.

Source: Crux

Thousands of people have gathered in Vatican City to celebrate Easter with the pope.

At Easter Sunday Mass, Pope Francis appealed for a ceasefire in Gaza, and for warring countries Russia and Ukraine to free the soldiers they’ve taken captive.

“In calling for respect for the principles of international law, I express my hope for a general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine: all for the sake of all!”

The pontiff has been battling respiratory and mobility problems in recent months, and has been unable to carry out some of his regular speeches and duties.

Easter Sunday is Christianity’s holiest day of the year – the day that many believe Jesus Christ was raised from the dead after his crucifixion.

Source: Africa News

Evidence of widespread abuse and torture by the founder of one of the world’s biggest Christian evangelical churches has been uncovered by the BBC.

Dozens of ex-Synagogue Church of all Nations members – five British – allege atrocities, including rape and forced abortions, by Nigeria’s late TB Joshua.

The allegations of abuse in a secretive Lagos compound span almost 20 years.

The Synagogue Church of All Nations did not respond to the allegations but said previous claims have been unfounded.

TB Joshua, who died in 2021, was a charismatic and hugely successful preacher and televangelist who had an immense global following.

The BBC’s findings over a two-year investigation include:

Dozens of eyewitness accounts of physical violence or torture carried out by Joshua, including instances of child abuse and people being whipped and chained

Numerous women who say they were sexually assaulted by Joshua, with a number claiming they were repeatedly raped for years inside the compound

Multiple allegations of forced abortions inside the church following the alleged rapes by Joshua, including one woman who says she had five terminations

Multiple first-hand accounts detailing how Joshua faked his “miracle healings”, which were broadcast to millions of people around the world

One of the victims, a British woman, called Rae, was 21 years old when she abandoned her degree at Brighton University in 2002 and was recruited into the church. She spent the next 12 years as one of Joshua’s so-called “disciples” inside his maze-like concrete compound in Lagos.

“We all thought we were in heaven, but we were in hell, and in hell terrible things happen,” she told the BBC.

Rae says she was sexually assaulted by Joshua and subjected to a form of solitary confinement for two years. The abuse was so severe, she says she attempted suicide multiple times inside the compound.

The Synagogue Church of All Nations [Scoan] has a global following, operating a Christian TV channel called Emmanuel TV and social media networks with millions of viewers. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, tens of thousands of pilgrims from Europe, the Americas, South East Asia and Africa travelled to the church in Nigeria to witness Joshua performing “healing miracles”. At least 150 visitors lived with him as disciples inside his compound in Lagos, sometimes for decades.

Culled from the BBC

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is facing increasingly strong opposition inside the Vatican. The conservative clan of the Roman Curia – the powerful governing body of the Holy See – accuses him of a laxist vision of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the status of homosexual couples and divorced people in the Church.

After more than a decade as pontiff, Pope Francis finds himself facing a major challenge: maintaining the unity of the Catholic Church’s 1.3 billion faithful worldwide. This task is made even more complex by hefty criticism of Francis’s governance from conservative circles. The pope is critiqued in particular for an overly laxist doctrinal vision and a certain authoritarianism in Church management.

Since the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI at the end of 2022, pressure on Francis’s pontificate has intensified. The pontiff’s unprecedented and controversial decision on December 18 to authorise priests to bless homosexual couples under certain conditions is causing endless controversy. The “anti-Pope Francis” clan now seems more determined than ever to pursue its objective: push Francis out of office.

For now, the 87-year-old Argentinian pope is resisting and showing that he has no intention of stepping down, as long as his health allows him to continue leading the Church. But in the Vatican corridors, many now speak of a “lame-duck atmosphere”.

Source: France 24

The normally bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town on Sunday, as Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war. The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists who gather each year to mark the holiday.

The gift shops were slow to open on Christmas Eve, although a few did once the rain had stopped pouring down. There were few visitors, however.

“This year, without the Christmas tree and without lights, there’s just darkness,” said Brother John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam who has lived in Jerusalem for six years.

He said he always comes to Bethlehem to mark Christmas, but this year was especially sobering, as he gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the hundreds of children killed in the fighting in Gaza. Barbed wire surrounded the scene, the grey rubble reflecting none of the joyous lights and bursts of color that normally fill the square during the Christmas season.

“We can’t justify putting out a tree and celebrating as normal, when some people (in Gaza) don’t even have houses to go to,” said Ala’a Salameh, one of the owners of Afteem Restaurant, a family-owned falafel restaurant just steps from the square.

Salameh said Christmas Eve is usually the busiest day of the year. “Normally, you can’t find a single chair to sit, we’re full from morning till midnight,” said Salameh. This year, just one table was taken, by journalists taking a break from the rain.

Salameh said his restaurant was operating at about 15% of normal business and wasn’t able to cover operating costs. He estimated that even after the war ends, it will take another year for tourism to return to Bethlehem as normal.

The cancellation of Christmas festivities is a severe blow to the town’s economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem’s income — almost all of that during the Christmas season.

With many major airlines canceling flights to Israel, few foreigners are visiting. Local officials say over 70 hotels in Bethlehem have been forced to close, leaving thousands of people unemployed.

Over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50,000 wounded during Israel’s air and ground offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers, according to health officials there, while some 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced. The war was triggered by Hamas’ deadly assault Oct. 7 on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages.

The fighting in Gaza has also affected life in the West Bank. Since Oct. 7, access to Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the Israeli-occupied territory has been difficult, with long lines of motorists waiting to pass military checkpoints. The restrictions have also prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from exiting the territory to work in Israel.

Source: AP

Pope Francis has chosen to be buried not in St Peter’s Basilica alongside his immediate predecessors but in a basilica in Rome, he revealed in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

“The place is already prepared. I want to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore,” the pontiff, who turns 87 this weekend, told Mexican broadcaster Televisa’s N+ streaming service.

In the same interview, he revealed he planned to visit Belgium in 2024, and also hoped to visit his native Argentina and Polynesia.

Francis’s decision means he would become the first pope to be buried outside the Vatican for more than 100 years.

The last to eschew a tomb in St Peter’s was Leo XIII, who died in 1903. His remains lie in the basilica of St John the Lateran in Rome.

Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the four papal basilicas in Rome, and one with which Francis said he felt a “special connection”.

He would often go there on a Sunday while visiting Rome before becoming pope. Since his election in 2013, he prays there before and after taking a trip, and has also prayed there after undergoing surgery.

Seven popes have previously been laid to rest in the basilica, according to the Vatican News official media outlet.

The pontiff has suffered from increasing health issues in recent years, and was forced to cancel a visit to COP28 climate talks in Dubai due to bronchitis.

In his interview recorded on Tuesday, in which he appeared much better, he paid tribute to his predecessor Benedict XVI for having had “the courage” to step down when his health was failing him.

The German pontiff in 2013 became the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign.

Benedict died on December 31, 2022, and after a funeral in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican — led by Francis — his body was buried in the tomb under the church.

It was the same tomb that held former pope John Paul II’s body before it was moved for his beatification in 2011.

Francis has said he would be open to following Benedict’s example if he could no longer perform his duties, but has said stepping down should not become a “normal thing” for popes.

Source: AFP