Roman Catholic Church News

Even as family and fans were preparing to lay the late pop star Michael Jackson to rest, figures on the political right were lambasting the singer as a "pervert" and a "pedophile." Newsday , in a July 9 article, reported that a U.S. congressman, Peter King, had posted a YouTube clip in which he called Jackson a "pervert," saying, "Let's knock out ...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was criticized this week over his handling of a communion wafer at Romeo LeBlanc's Catholic-service funeral.

When President Obama meets with Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, there will be no right-wing Catholic demonstrators upbraiding the pontiff, as they did Notre Dame earlier this year, for conferring the church's legitimacy upon this liberal politician.

Thousands of Irish Catholics have flocked this week to a County Limerick church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow that many observers say, has the silhouette of the Virgin Mary.

Maine's supreme court has ruled against the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland in a sex-abuse case that raised an issue of immunity.

POPE Benedict XVI on Wednesday hosted the wives of world leaders who were in Italy attending the G-8 summit, the Vatican said.

By Genevieve Pollock WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 7, 2009 .- Benedict XVI's latest encyclical offers a unique vision by using traditional principles to enlighten today's societal issues such as globalization, the economy, technology and the environment, affirms a university president.

IT would be "crass and counter-productive" for Kevin Rudd to attempt to lobby Pope Benedict XVI on the canonisation of Mary MacKillop, Jesuit priest Frank Brennan said yesterday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper consumed a communion wafer given him by a Roman Catholic priest last week and did not put it in his pocket as critics allege, says a spokesman.

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday replaced the cardinal responsible for lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop as part of the Vatican's effort to reconcile with an ultraconservative group.

Faced with rapidly declining enrollment and mounting debt, Towson Catholic High School will not open for classes in September and becomes the archdiocese's first high school to close in many years.

Catholic Charities of Buffalo fell just short of its campaign goal, raising nearly 95 percent of its $11 million goal.

President Barack Obama listens to language translation during the Civil Society Leaders Forum, Tuesday, July 7, 2009, in Moscow.

VATICAN CITY, JULY 5, 2009 .- Benedict XVI is exhorting world leaders to look at the economic crisis as a reason to continue sending aid to underdeveloped nations, not as an excuse to stop.

AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Tuesday was accused of 'sheer arrogance' over moves to press the Pope to create the country's first saint.

The Diocese of Green Bay announced late Monday that an Appleton woman has been hired as the Catholic schools director.

Nicole Winfield Vatican City - Last updated on Tuesday, Jul. 07, 2009 08:34AM EDT P ope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics, dignity and the search for the common good in the third encyclical of his pontificate.

A CRUDE bomb exploded in front of a petrol station on a restive island in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, killing six people and wounding 40, a military spokesman said.

President Obama made his comments during a 45-minute roundtable discussion at the White House July 2, with eight senior religion journalists, including Catholic Digest editor-in-chief Dan Connors.

VATICAN CITY, JULY 5, 2009 .- Ever since murder marked the very first human family, people have continued to kill one another, but God's answer to this is the blood of his Son, Benedict XVI says.