Catholic church

Assisi In a medieval church built of white stone, pilgrims and tourists shuffle past the body of a 15-year-old boy in a tomb with a glass side. The boy is handsome, with dark curly hair, and wears a blue tracksuit top, jeans and Nike trainers. Everyone peers through the glass and some realise, with a start, that the perfectly preserved face and hands are eerily lifelike silicone. The real remains, decomposing for almost 20 years, are inside the effigy. This is Carlo Acutis, the Italian teenager known as ‘God’s influencer’, who is about to become the first millennial saint of the Roman Catholic Church. The tomb is held up from behind and so appears to levitate, surrounded by a corona of bright light.

Steady rain during the day stopped just before Monday’s evening prayers for Pope Francis in Saint Peter’s Square. A line of cardinals sat on a platform, an ageing politburo in black and scarlet. A couple of thousand of the faithful and the curious stood below. Vatican gendarmes, wearing kepis and carrying sidearms, directed people to their places. The Swiss Guard were not on duty. Their gaudy, striped uniforms would anyway have been too exuberant for the occasion, a tenth night in hospital for the Pope, dangerously ill with double pneumonia at the age of 88. Floodlights illuminated the great baroque façade of the most famous building in Christendom. Cobblestones glistened; fountains shimmered. There was a nasty chill in the air.

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.

Years ago Lord Patten of Barnes – Chris – was our guest for my Great Lives programme on BBC Radio 4. He championed the life of Pope John XXIII, a mid-20th-century pope from humble origins who (his admirers would say) did much to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the 20th century. He had his detractors too, Evelyn Waugh for instance: ‘Easter used to mean so much to me before Pope John and his council… I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the faith doggedly without joy.’ The muscle memory of today’s pop-musical taste is half a century long I leave Catholic culture wars to Catholics, mentioning this recording only for a remark of Patten’s that struck a chord with me.

‘How does anyone young and stupid manage to get married?’ I kept shouting at the builder boyfriend as I pummelled the keys of my laptop to try to force the website of the registrar to give me a date. It seems I picked the worst possible time to try to serve notice because, as anyone who has contacted a registrar lately will know, they are experiencing unprecedented demand for their services.

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.

The Alaska Department of Corrections has instituted a new policy that banned the use of altar wine during religious ceremonies, effectively barring Catholic Mass from being offered at correctional facilities. "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 interim policy established on June 6 reads. 816.01-IPPMDownload The interim policy effectively bans Catholic masses, which require a priest to consecrate and consume both bread and wine in order for the Mass to be considered valid.