Catholic church

“And this,” I was told, five minutes after arriving in Mexico, “is where they murdered the Archbishop.” I was at the entrance to the car park at Guadalajara airport. The archbishop was Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, who died in a hail of bullets on May 24, 1993, along with six other people. He was murdered for daring to criticize the cartels, at least according to the official narrative. There are other theories: he may have been caught in crossfire between rival cartels, or it may have been a case of mistaken identity, and Posadas was assumed to be a cartel head, many of whom, presumably, look like archbishops; or else it was the work of the government itself, which feared Posadas knew too much about its collusion with the cartels.

Jesus, it could be reasonably observed, recruited a motley cast to serve as the first heralds of the gospel. An endlessly squabbling band of fishermen, with a few tax collectors and zealots thrown in, the biblical narratives have them endlessly jockeying among themselves for prominence and status before they, to a man, flee when the going gets tough and their Messiah gets arrested. In the two thousand years since, the Catholic Church has done its best to balance the inevitable imperfections of its messengers with the perfect truths they are supposed to announce. It’s not always an easy task – and as with so many other things, the internet has made it much more complicated.

Rome Like a Parioli matron shedding her curlers, pins and hairnet in anticipation of a major family celebration, Rome’s monuments are emerging from shrouds of cladding and scaffolding ready for their close-up. The angels and river gods of the Ponte Sant’ Angelo and the Piazza Navona shine as blinding white as the day they emerged from Bernini’s workshop. The ancient granite basins of the Piazza Farnese fountains shimmer with an ethereal bluish light. The big occasion is the Papal Jubilee year of 2025, expected to draw a whopping 32 million visitors. That’s more than ten times Rome’s population, and half as many visitors again as in a normal year. If you’re planning a visit, do it soon before the city is entirely swallowed by crowds.

Everyone in the world, it seems, believes they’re entitled to an opinion on US immigration policy. That includes Pope Francis. The Supreme Pontiff made clear his displeasure with the administration’s resetting of America’s approach to immigration in a letter addressed to the US Catholic bishops, but clearly directed against the new Trump administration’s efforts to enforce existing US immigration laws — with a particular emphasis on deporting immigrants who are criminals or who have committed crimes as well as others judged not to have valid claims to refugee status.

Papa don’t preach! It’s not every day that the Supreme Pontiff, the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion souls on earth, deigns to weigh in on a social media spat involving the vice president of the United States. But Pope Francis is no ordinary pontiff — and he’s just launched an extraordinary broadside against the new Trump administration, including a clear rebuke of J.D. Vance over his recent Twitter row with the British politician-cum-podcaster, Rory Stewart. Last week, as Cockburn noted, J D Vance appeared to "pwn," as the kids say, Stewart in a row over Christian principles and the issue of immigration. "Google ‘ordo amoris,’" Vance told the equine-mouthed Stewart on X, as he cast an uncharitable (albeit accurate) aspersion on Stewart’s intelligence quotient.

Pope Francis threw down the gauntlet earlier this month by removing Joseph Strickland from his position as bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, after the conservative church leader reportedly refused to resign. Now, reports the AP, the Pope is enacting similar vengeance on another of his critics by revoking Cardinal Raymond Burke’s “right to a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary in the second such radical action against a conservative American prelate this month.” Strickland, an outspoken traditionalist, has long been a thorn in liberal Francis’s side.

The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced that a parish priest has been demoted for allowing pop singer Sabrina Carpenter to film her new music video in the sanctuary of the church. Money provided to the church from Carpenter's production team will also be re-donated to a crisis pregnancy center. Carpenter's music video for her single “Feather”, which was partially filmed at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brooklyn, New York, dropped on Halloween last week. In the video, Carpenter is seen dancing provocatively in black underwear in the church sanctuary and in front of the altar, which were decorated with pastel and neon props that featured obscene language.

The Alaska Department of Corrections reversed its policy banning alcoholic wine from religious ceremonies in prison facilities on Friday, following a report from The Spectator. The interim policy, which was issued on June 6 and signed by Commissioner Jennifer Winkelman, stated that "no altar wine or other alcoholic beverages will be used by anyone who is involved with any activity. The use of a non-alcoholic substitute (juice) for altar wine may be considered." The policy effectively banned Catholic masses, which require alcoholic wine in order to be considered valid, from the prison system. Catholic prisoners would thus be unable to fulfill their holy obligation to attend Mass each Sunday.