Analysis

Late last month, the president of Vietnam, Tran Dai Quang, met with Pope Francis for a private audience at the Vatican. Though the meeting was described by the Holy See Press Office as “cordial,” relations […]

• Not long after posting my lengthy essay “The Four Cardinals and the Encyclical in the Room”, I saw The Catholic Herald had posted a piece on Cardinal George Pell, who was in London to give an address: Cardinal […]

The rashest reaction to the “Four Cardinals’ Five Dubia” so far is that from Bp. Frangiskos Papamanolis, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Greece, whose railing against the questions posed by Cdls. Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra, and Meisner in […]

Those who, having read Joseph Cdl. Zen, George Weigel, or Yu Jie, are tracking with some trepidation reports on the Holy See’s negotiations with Communist China in regard to, among other things, the appointment of bishops in that […]

Fidel Castro is dead. To say those words is so strange. I’ve never known a moment when he wasn’t alive. Castro came to power seven years before I was born, and I’m almost 50. I’ve […]

In 1152-1154 Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear was on a tour of the North, visiting Norway and Sweden by the instigation of Pope Eugene III. During the summer of 1152 he presided over a meeting in Linköping […]

When the pot is boiling, turn down the heat. You can’t be sure, but that could well have been part of the reasoning behind Pope’s Francis’s decision to choose as topic of the next world […]

Apropos of nothing in particular—but I suppose of several things in general, like the continuing turmoil over Amoris laetitia, the Buenos Aires directives, the Roman diocesan protocol, and a torrent of commentary (including some by orthodox writers), that, […]

The seventeenth century philosopher, Rene Descartes, is best remembered for his pithy little aphorism, “I think, therefore I am.” His point was profound, though not entirely original. St. Augustine made essentially the same point twelve […]

Based on his numerous personnel appointments, it is clear what type of Church leadership Pope Francis prefers. American Catholics have learned this through the election of Blaise Cupich as Archbishop of Chicago and his imminent […]