It’s the eyes — swollen, dark and merciless — that everyone notices. They stare out from the mosaic walls of some of the most beloved shrines in the Catholic World, including Lourdes, Fatima and St Padre Pio. They’ve been called “Roswell eyes” because they remind people of alien-abduction art. For decades, visitors to these holy … Read more
Ten years ago today, on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the 115 cardinal-electors of the Catholic Church walked up one after the other to a table in the Sistine Chapel to deposit folded ballot papers, only an inch wide, in a silver urn. Each bore the name of the cardinal they wanted to … Read more
It might seem perverse to describe the death of a painfully frail 95-year-old man as a uniquely sad event. But in the case of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI we have to consider the poignant and unsettling circumstances in which he died. I was in St Peter’s Square on 10 April, 2005, when the words “Josephum … Read more
This headline may seem sensational, but the evidence is overwhelming. The Catholic Church is experiencing a bewildering range of crises, some of them long-term and familiar, such as demographic collapse and the continuing scandal of sex abuse. Others are being manufactured by a Pope who is allowing a faction of Catholic boomers to push … Read more
Damian Thompson looks at the ever-deepening mysteries surrounding Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who was given a job assessing Vatican finances after he was forced to resign from his diocese in Argentina following allegations of abusive behaviour and financial mismanagement. Zanchetta received a lengthy jail sentence for abusing seminarians. But he’s serving his time in a comfortable … Read more
Pope Francis is sorry and not sorry. Last week, he was in Canada to deliver an apology for the abuse suffered by indigenous children in schools run by the Catholic Church. He was rewarded with approving headlines — and an even better photo-opportunity involving a spectacular feather headdress. That may strike you as a cynical … Read more
Today’s episode of Holy Smoke exposes the extent to which ordinary Christians have been betrayed by their own bishops. This is a process that began decades ago – but it is only this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, that we’ve seen just how corrupted church leaders have become by secularisation. The need to close churches … Read more
The publication of In the Closet of the Vatican by the French gay polemicist Frédéric Martel has been meticulously timed to coincide with Pope Francis’s ‘global summit’ of bishops to discuss the sexual abuse of minors. The book appeared in eight languages on Thursday morning, just as the gathering began. It is being hyped as a ‘bombshell’ … Read more
If the head of any other organisation were guilty of such complicity, he or she would not only be forced to resign but could also end up in the dock It’s depressing to see the media – both Catholic and secular – shielding Pope Francis from the explosive allegation made by his own former nuncio to the … Read more