All posts tagged: Catholicism

Pope Leo’s delicate task in Equatorial Guinea: Bless the faithful, not the regime

Pope Leo’s delicate task in Equatorial Guinea: Bless the faithful, not the regime

Published by Sam Flores

MALABO, Equatorial Guinea (RNS) — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday morning (April 21), greeted by cheering crowds and a Catholic Church that sees his visit as both a spiritual embrace and a moment for national reflection. “This visit is like a sign that God has not forgotten His people,” said Malabo Archbishop Juan Nsue Edjang Mayé, ahead of the pope’s arrival. “It brings encouragement not only to Catholics, but to the whole nation, especially in times that call for unity and hope.” The pontiff landed in Malabo after concluding his visit to Angola, marking the final leg of a multicountry African tour that has consistently emphasized peace, accountability and the moral responsibilities of leadership. Observers say the pope’s visit comes at a sensitive moment in Equatorial Guinea, as growing economic pressures and long-standing governance concerns continue to shape daily life for many citizens. The Vatican has indicated that Pope Leo will address these issues during his visit. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the pope is expected to speak about corruption, governance …

For Catholic voters, Trump’s record may be catching up with him

For Catholic voters, Trump’s record may be catching up with him

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — As almost every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, including Donald Trump, has needed the Catholic vote to get elected, political pundits are wondering why the president has picked a fight with the head of the Catholic Church and what impact it will have on the November mid-term elections. When faced with disagreements, Trump appears to have only one response: attack. Insulting his opponents has worked for his positive perception from his base so often that he mistakenly thought it would work with the pope. But the pope deflected the attack, refusing to get into a mud wrestling match with the president. Pope Leo XIV has an 84% approval rating among Catholics, while Trump’s approval rating with Americans has been falling and is only around 40% — less than half that of the pope. What impact will this fight have on Catholic voters? Trump once bragged, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Some Catholic Trump supporters will stick with him no matter …

Reading Pope Francis a Year Later

Reading Pope Francis a Year Later

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — A year after his death, the Catholic Church is moving forward — and revealing what Francis actually changed. While he was alive, Francis’ papacy was interpreted in real time: praised, criticized and debated. It was difficult to separate what was truly changing from what simply felt different because of him. Now, the Church moves forward, and this movement offers something new — a chance to see what was durable. What still feels like Francis? What has been absorbed into the Church’s way of operating? And what, if anything, has already begun to fade? In this episode, we step back from the moment-to-moment reactions and take a first real look at Pope Francis in hindsight. Not to revisit his papacy, but to understand it differently — through what we can now see. Source link

On Africa trip, Pope Leo will face debate over polygamy as Catholicism booms

On Africa trip, Pope Leo will face debate over polygamy as Catholicism booms

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY — This week, Pope Leo XIV will walk in the footsteps of his icon, Saint Augustine of Hippo, a towering theologian whose birth in what is now Algeria makes him history’s most revered African Catholic. In strife-ridden Cameroon and authoritarian Equatorial Guinea, Leo will flex his powers as peacemaker and diplomat. In oil-rich Angola, he will confront a microcosm of the global tussle between Catholicism and evangelical faiths. Source link

Looksmaxxing, Catholicism and the new discipline of the body

Looksmaxxing, Catholicism and the new discipline of the body

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Braden Peters, a streamer who goes by Clavicular, posted a recent video last week announcing he would broadcast his life 24 hours a day for a month on Kick, where he has about 250,000 followers. “I live in a luxury condominium in downtown Miami, the penthouse,” Peters said with a deadpan affect in the video. “My name is Clavicular. I’m 20 years old. I believe in looksmaxxing — the idea of maximizing physical attractiveness by any means necessary in order to ascend.” He looks directly into the camera, as if addressing a mirror. “My ratios are almost golden now.” Peters, who has said he is Catholic, speaks about self-optimization in the language of religion: discipline, hierarchy, “ascension.” In the larger looksmaxxing community, physical transformation is treated as a moral imperative, one obtainable by persistent self-denial and the pursuit of an ideal form. To some observers, including religious scholars and Catholics in his milieu, the ethos resembles a kind of inverted asceticism: a life structured around sacrifice and perfection, not to a higher power, …

I fasted for friendship during Ramadan and Lent. Here’s what I learned.

I fasted for friendship during Ramadan and Lent. Here’s what I learned.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — I visited Lahore just as the month of Ramzan (or Ramadan) and the season of Lent were about to begin.   For me, a question loomed. How do I balance my religious obligation as a Sikh with my desire to have solidarity, especially with my Muslim friends with whom I was staying?    As a Sikh, I believe I am prohibited from fasting for religious reasons. For example, Siri Guru Granth Sahib says:   pujaa vart tilak isnaanaa pun daan bahu dain   Kahun na bheejae swami bolhae methae bain   (“Worshiping, fasting, ceremonial marks on forehead, cleansing baths, generous donations to charities and self-mortification: God is not pleased with any of these, no matter how sweetly one may speak.”)   For the first few days, I observed my Muslim friends eating the morning sehri (or suhur) meal before sunrise, fasting until iftar at sunset and performing the five daily namaz (prayers). Then,I decided I would undertake a fast for one day — not for religious reasons, but for friendship.   At my request, around 4 a.m., my Muslim friends woke me up, and we had a light meal of sehri with our servant sitting with us …

Pope Leo XIV faces crisis as a traditionalist group plans bishop consecrations without consent

Pope Leo XIV faces crisis as a traditionalist group plans bishop consecrations without consent

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is facing his first major crisis with traditionalist Catholics: A breakaway group attached to the traditional Latin Mass announced plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent in a threatened revival of schism. The Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X, which has schools, chapels and seminaries around the world, has been a thorn in the side of the Holy See for four decades, founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council. In 1988, the group’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent, arguing that it was necessary for the survival of the church’s tradition. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the Catholic Church. But in the decades since that original break with Rome, the group has continued to grow, with branches of priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are attached to the pre-Vatican II traditional Latin Mass. For the Vatican, papal consent for the consecration of …

Is church unity worth a Latin Mass?

Is church unity worth a Latin Mass?

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — “Paris is well worth a Mass” was reportedly the attitude of King Henry IV when he was trying to secure the French throne. As a result, he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in 1593.  Today, the Eucharist, which is supposed to be the sacrament of unity, is too often a battlefield between Catholics who support the Traditional Latin Mass and those who want to see it disappear. Both sides need to ask themselves whether the fight is worth something more important than Paris: the unity of the church. You must be my age to remember before the Second Vatican Council, when the liturgy was entirely in Latin in Catholic churches, except in those using Eastern Rite liturgies, where it was often in Greek. In Rome, it had been changed from Greek into Latin in the third and fourth centuries so the common people could understand it — a pragmatic decision, not a theological one. When I was young, we took it for granted that the Mass was in Latin. It was something that …

Vatican journalist and expert John L. Allen Jr. dies at 61

Vatican journalist and expert John L. Allen Jr. dies at 61

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — John L. Allen Jr., a journalist who covered the Catholic Church for more than a quarter century, died of cancer in Rome on Thursday (Jan. 22), at age 61. From the end of the 20th century until his death, Allen was essential reading for anyone who cared about the inner workings of the Vatican. He will be missed by all who treasured his expertise, his writing and his friendship. “During the John Paul II and Benedict years, he was the go-to source for explaining what was happening in Rome,” said Austen Ivereigh, a Vatican commenter and the author of a biography of Pope Francis. “He was the great de-mystifier. He loved Rome for the extraordinary bird’e-eye view it gave of the church, and through it, the world. He used to say he had the best job in journalism.” Catholics first benefited from Allen’s expertise when he was appointed the National Catholic Reporter‘s Vatican reporter in 2000. In 2014, The Boston Globe offered him the chance to launch Crux, a “vertical” — a news …

Catholicism continues sharp decline in Latin America

Catholicism continues sharp decline in Latin America

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Over the last decade, Catholicism has continued to decline sharply in Latin America, as the share of adults who are religiously unaffiliated rises, according to a new survey looking at religiosity in six countries. The survey, fielded in 2024 and released Wednesday (Jan. 21) by the Pew Research Center, studied Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru and found declining rates of Catholicism in every country. Colombia saw the largest drop, where 6 in 10 (60%) adults identified as Catholic in 2024 compared with 8 in 10 (79%) in the 2013-2014 survey. The smallest drop in Catholicism was in Peru — the country where Pope Leo served for more than two decades before being elected pope — with a 9-point decrease over the decade between surveys (76% in 2013-2014 down to 67% in 2024). Meanwhile, the survey found the religiously unaffiliated nearly doubled or saw even larger gains in every country. In Brazil, where the gains were the smallest, the unaffiliated grew from 8% to 15% of the population. In Peru, 12% of …